Twin Suns
by fiesa
Summary: The Sword of the Jedi is sent to hunt down Alema Rar. Jaina Solo never wanted to see Jagged Fel again. She also never wanted to get to know Tatooine – but Tatooine already knows her. Multi-chaptered- Jaina, Jag. AU.
1. prologue, arrival

**Twin Suns**

_Summary: The Sword of the Jedi is sent to hunt down Alema Rar. Jaina never wanted to see Jagged Fel again. She also never wanted to get to know Tatooine – but Tatooine already knows her. Multi-chaptered- Jaina, Jag. AU._

_Warning: This story is set in the Legends-universe. In other words: it is AU. *sigh* I mostly messed with time-lines and some key-events. (My version of the "Sword of the Jedi"-trilogy I was impatiently waiting for and that might never be released now…)_

_Set: Story-unrelated. (Extended version of # 44 (Moon) from the SW drabble collection "From the Inside".) (Can be seen as AU from The Swarm Wars on.) (Edit after 12.000 words: VERY extended version.)_

_Disclaimer: Standards apply. _

_Correction: In "From the Inside", Tatooine is said to have two moons. This is incorrect: It has two suns (Tatoo I+II) and three moons (Ghomrassen, Guermessa + Chenini). (Source: Star Wars Wikia)_

_Dedicated to IrrelevantIsKey. Who knows why. Thank you, again – I hope this is to your liking! Otherwise I will try to think of something else. Something fluff-related. And possibly wedding-related, too! :) _

_And last, but not least… Merry Christmas (or whatever you are celebrating) 2014!_

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><p><strong>Prologue: Arrival<strong>

She had expected the heat.

Tatooine's two suns burned down relentlessly onto the dry, hot ground of the desert village. Even between the ducking houses the heat was dry and choking, so unlike the warm, humid climate of Yavin Four. She had expected the exhausting flight to the outermost Outer Rim planet in the known galaxy, as her uncle had called it, and the stiffness that came with being cramped into a StealthX cockpit for hours. It had been followed by a three standard hour flight on a civilian passenger shuttle packed with beings of every race and nationality, voices, cries and laughter blending into a mix that, combined with the heat, the closeness and the _stink,_ made her want to throw up. She had expected the worn, dirty and ugly space port of Mos Eisley, the horrendous protective tariff collected by a bickering, reeking hutt (of which probably more than half would wander into his own pockets) and the difficulties of finding a guide who was willing to lead her out into the desert and where she needed to go. She had spent almost nine standard hours questioning, bargaining and growing more and more annoyed as every potential desert runner, after learning what her destination was, more or less hurriedly (and more or less impolitely) declined her request. After eight hours, the news had finally made the round that a crazy woman was looking for a guide. She was met with snickers and flat-out refusals before she even had made an offer. She had grown more and more weary, and more and more desperate, until she had finally found a sun-tanned, wrinkled woman with the annoying habit of chewing on the stump end of an empty pipe. Or had the woman found her? She had been sitting against a wall of the clay-walled huts squatting against the larger structure of Mos Eisley space port as if aware of the protection it offered. She had almost overlooked her. In hindsight it must have meant the woman had hidden her Force aura, which meant she possessed at least a modicum of Force ability. But then she had only heard someone call out to her and had stopped, guardedly, to locate the source of the voice.

"Girl. Jedi."

The Jedi knight had taken pains to conceal her identity. The fact that the woman knew her instantly aroused the suspicion she had collected over a lifetime of fights – wars, political intrigues, the likes – and increased her already high level of alertness. But the streets around them did not feel more hostile than before, and she could not feel any disturbance in the Force around her. There was no threat coming from the person – woman? – in front of her.

"I hear you are looking for a desert runner."

"News travel fast," she answered, carefully, and her hand tightened around her small blaster hidden under her wide cloak. She did not want to give away her identity, but she would have preferred her light saber here and now. "Do you know someone who can take me to the place they call Valley of the Spirits?"

She was throwing a gamble here, she knew. Giving away where she needed to go had not gone well with the many other guides she had asked before, but she was tired and close to something that felt dangerously like desperation. Instead of howling with laughter, like half of the guides had done, or looking at her as if she was crazy, what the other half had done, the woman just got to her feet and circled her once, mumbling something incoherent.

"What did you say?" Patience never had been her strongest trait.

The woman stopped in front of her – the Jedi wasn't tall, but the woman was even shorter – and smiled at her.

"I knew you would come."

"Pardon me?"

The woman waved off her prior statement, much to her annoyance. "You seem smart enough not to try going out there all by yourself. What's your name, girl?"

The Jedi forcibly relaxed her hand. "Teresa Mathis."

The woman stared into her face long and hard, barely blinking. Her Force presence was striking, intense in a way the Jedi knight had never encountered before. There was a hint of something – disapproval?

"Suspicious, eh. Well, it can't be helped." Stepping back, the woman closed her eyes, as if listening to some melody only she could hear. The Jedi fought her own internal battle: this woman clearly wasn't in her right mind. But she had offered to guide her, and in the place the scum and criminals called Mos Eisley she probably wouldn't find another person willing to take her to her destination. There was nothing in her Force signature that hinted at a mental instability, or even an intention of double-crossing her. On the other hand, the feeling she was getting was so alien she wasn't even sure she was actually facing a human. However… Clenching her jaws, she decided she could just as well risk trusting the woman. She had a mission to complete, after all, so she waited, motionless. After something that seemed like an eternity, the woman opened her eyes and sighed.

"Tomorrow at dawn. I'm Valyrianamia Stormchaser. Call me Valia. And be on time." She leant forward until the Jedi could see the flecks of gold in her dark eyes. "There is no need to hide your identity. We have waited for you a long time, Jaina Solo."

Then, she turned around and walked away.


	2. sky at dawn

**Chapter One**

_You didn't know me all that well, did you, little sister?_

Laughter tore her from her sleep; loud, dark and cruel laughter. Jaina shot up from her cot, disoriented and yet already grasping for the blaster under her pillow. She needed a few seconds to realize that the laughter was only in her mind; and that the rushing in her ears was her own, frantic heartbeat.

The sky beyond the small window was dark.

She had found herself a small, run-down place to stay, something that might have been a store-room once and had been converted to a makeshift bedroom for an overnight guest. Hotel rooms in Mos Eisley were either intolerable or intolerably expensive, so she had taken the advice her uncle had given when sending her out onto the mission. Luke Skywalker, Grand Master of the New Jedi Order, had grown up on Tatooine. Jaina had heard her Master call her husband a farm boy; it was her loving nickname for one out of the perhaps three most powerful beings in the known galaxy, smugglers and slave traders aside. It seemed the Grand Master had kept up with his home planet's customs despite having left it more than forty years ago because Jaina had easily found one of the small, hunched houses which displayed a sign next to the door. The wind-faded sigil had indicated at a free room to rent in exchange for some credits. The old couple that had opened the door had been nice, even generous, offering Jaina of their own surely sparse dinner and even water to rinse her hands and face. She had declined as politely as possible and had quickly shut herself in the small room: she needed some time to prepare her gear – and her thoughts. And then she must have fallen asleep. The next thing she remembered was jerking awake to the echoes of her nightmares.

Jaina had seen many people break.

Her father had broken when he had lost Chewbacca, and another time when Anakin had died. Only the second time, he had not left his wife for months. Jaina had once, in the middle of the night, stumbled across them: wrapped into each other's arms, a still statue of loss and of strength. Leia Organa Solo, Jaina supposed, would always be strong like that, but she also couldn't be strong all by herself. Han Solo, thankfully, had realized that before she had broken down completely. Jaina had felt Tenel Ka's anguish when Jacen died for the first time, his Force presence concealed completely by Vegere, and had seen Tahiri stumble and fall after Anakin's death. Even her uncle, the unbreakable, ever-optimistic Luke Skywalker, had frozen when he had felt his wife close to death, and had almost fallen when he had gone to encounter the one he had thought responsible. Mara Jade Skywalker had survived her encounter with Lumiya's Sith apprentice only because her unique immune system had saved her. It was ironic, seen from hindsight, that the medicine supplied by Vegere had saved the Jedi Master from Vegere's Sith accomplice. Jaina had seen Jacen slip, had even felt herself break in the same way. _Because we are twins. One heart, two bodies, forever, right Jaina?_ When Jaina had stumbled it had been Jacen's hand that had caught her, and when Jacen had doubted, Jaina had believed for him until he believed in himself again. She had expected them to stumble together, but to always find their path again together, as well.

She had never, ever expected him to fall.

The mission order had come fast and unexpectedly, that in itself had not been a surprise. Only it had come at the entirely wrong time. Jaina would have liked to stay with her family, especially in times like these, even though it probably wasn't the case she had the feeling her aunt needed her. And her parents. Her mother and father had kissed her good bye, smiling as always, but Jaina could see the strain in their shoulders. Her brother's actions had caused a rift to open between the Jedi and the government, a ragged, sharp-edged cut her mother and uncle would have to try to heal again. After Tahiri's botched assassination attempt on Admiral Pellaeon the Empire had withdrawn completely, but that didn't mean it would stay that way. And there still were the Mandalorians, and the Hapans, and all the large and even larger bushfires that sprang up here and there in the galaxy again and again. And Leia Organa Solo, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker would be in the midst of it, as always. Jaina did not envy them, but she also did not want to leave them alone. Especially not since her parents had lost another son, and her uncle had almost lost his wife and himself.

Luke Skywalker had looked exhausted and grey, his eyes sunken deep into his face. A different face flashed in front of Jaina's eyes as she entered his office, overlapped with the one she saw in front of her: this was the man who had played with them, the man who, patiently, had explained the ways of the Force and who had read them stories when it was time to go to bed. This was the one person who had resurrected the Jedi Order: Grand Master, father, uncle, husband and friend. The one person who could still best her in light saber training. If anyone was the Sword of the Jedi, Jaina thought, it was him.

"I am sorry," were his first words, and Jaina knew with the sinking feeling that was both her Force sense of him and her intuition, that he did not want to do what he was doing right now. "I am sorry, Jaina. But I cannot go. I will have to place this burden on your shoulders once again. After Lumiya-" He swallowed and could not even look at her, "I cannot trust myself right now."

His glance went through the walls of his office, seeking out a sight in his mind only he had access to. He looked lost and shattered, desolate. He would rise again, of course he would, because he was Luke Skywalker. And he still had his wife, and his son, and an Order of Jedi that would help him return to the right path. The darkness that had lingered around him shortly after he had killed the Sith Mistress was already diminishing, but it would take some time because he was blaming himself for Mara's situation. Jaina had not spoken to her former Master. In fact, nobody had. Mara Jade Skywalker had been in a coma since her son had brought her home. It wasn't the usual Jedi healing trance. It was darker, deeper, something almost desperate, and Master Cilghal, Tekli and every Healer the Jedi had had tried to wake her – to no avail. Stubbornly, Mara had refused to regain consciousness. The injuries she had sustained were severe. Her spinal cord had been damaged badly and Cilghal had only been able to save her life but not her ability to walk. Her damaged neuronal system prevented any replacement of muscles and tissue with mechanical implants. Weeks in a bacta tank had healed many of the physical injuries Darth Caedus had inflicted on the Jedi Master. Her mind, however, was a different matter. Sometimes, quietly sitting at her aunt's side, Jaina wondered. It had always been a battle of wills, since she could remember: the even-tempered Grand Master and his fiery-eyed wife; supporting each other, loving each other with a depth she couldn't help but envy from the bottom of her heart. Seeing one of them without the other felt almost physically wrong. Luke Skywalker had barely spent a minute apart from his wife since Ben had carried her into the Temple, bleeding and unconscious, but especially a Grand Master had to sleep, had to eat, and had to function for the sake of the Order. He'd grown thin, grey and tired, but he still was there. And Jaina had known that she would go wherever her uncle needed her if it would help lighten the load he had to carry. But she also knew that everything broke, sooner or later. There was only so much strain a person could take. And beings broke in different ways. She just hoped – prayed, desperately – that her uncle would still be there when she returned, and her parents. The last remnants of what once had been her home, because home was where her family was, and now half of it was gone. Half of Jaina was gone, and it was her own fault. She should have stopped him. She should have known – she should have _felt – _but she hadn't. She had failed. How could she still be called a Jedi Knight?

Sword of the Jedi my ass.

Her brother's pleading in her ears – _don't do that to me, Jaina, you're my twin, don't, please, don't let them do this to me – _she fell asleep again and dreamed of blood-red Sith eyes, the clash of dueling light sabers and blood all over her hands. When she jerked away the next time, sweaty and terrified, she got up instead and tried to meditate. It wasn't enough – it never was, these days – but it was enough to calm her frantic heartbeat and to focus her mind on what had to be done.

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><p>The sunrise was striking; as if to point out the difference between beauty to the eye and inner beauty. For such a horrid, hot and desperate planet, it managed to hold Jaina's attention for a few seconds. When she lowered her gaze back to the ground a slave trader passed in a run-down speeder, three slaves desperately following and trying not to fall as to not be pulled behind by their shackles. Did human beings, she wondered, get used to oppression and slavery? Because the sight would have had her reeling in anger a few years ago, especially after what the Yuuzhan Vong had done to her galaxy. Now, the only thing she felt was bitterness. She grabbed her gear instead, cast one last glance at the empty room and left.<p>

Not entirely unexpected, Valia was a remarkable person.

Jaina had expected the challenges it took to move through the desert streets of Tatooine. The sand was everywhere. In her dirty brown cloak, her guide sometimes seemed to disappear in their surroundings entirely. No matter the heat, her surroundings and even her age, she moved through the dusty roads with all the elegance of a dancer. Jaina was not taller than her guide, approximately thirty years younger and had trained both her body and her mind since she was six. Still, she felt clumsy and inexperienced compared to the other woman. At least she didn't talk much. It was a relief: she would not have stood idle chitchat while crossing through Mos Eisley. Her guide led her through narrow streets in which already busy vendors were setting up stalls, where women were sitting in the shadow of the entrances. On a door step, two children were playing some kind of game that involved glass stones. They peeked at her, both shy and curious. They were used to the sight of faces that were almost completely hidden beneath masks and shawls, Jaina supposed. She was putting off the moment she had to cover her face completely but a thin piece of cloth was already covering the lower part of her face, leaving only her eyes to be seen. One of the children – a girl, if the length of its hair had any say in its gender – waved at her and smiled. Jaina hurried on.

"Grandma!"

After a time that felt like an eternity in the steadily increasing desert heat, they reached a small repair shop in the outskirts of Mos Eisley. In the sparse shade a large tarp provided, an old man and two younger ones were working on something that looked vaguely like a land speeder but that was so dusty it could have been a droid that had been trying to clean the desert.

"Janus, my grand-son," the woman introduced one of the two men who leaned down to hug her. "Janus, this is Teresa. She's on her way to visit her family."

"Nice to meet you." The young man – barely twenty-four? – squinted at her. "Western Dune Sea?"

"That direction." Jaina was not willing to disclose any more information. The boy looked nice and the thought made her feel old. If Anakin had survived the Yuuzhan Vong war, he'd be that age now-

"We'll take my speeder," Valia informed her grandson with an affectionate nudge. "Don't stare, Janus."

"Sorry." He turned away, embarrassed. A good boy. "Follow me. I've kept it as you asked me, it's ready to go."

Valia's means of transportation was a dust-yellow speeder that looked old but well-kept.

Jaina eyed it critically while her guide chatted to the owner of the repair shop. Janus hovered in the background.

"You're a beauty." She didn't realize she was voicing the words out loud as she patted the speeder's body.

"She's old, but ship-shape." The boy used the opening she had not intended to hand to him. "Just like Grandma. She's one of the best desert runners, too, though she seldom takes a job offer these days." He hesitated. "Why is she working for you?"

"Don't know." Jaina shrugged, opting for half-truths. "Maybe she thought I'd kill myself trying to cross the Sea by myself if she didn't take care of me."

Janus laughed. "She's like that, yes." He eyed at her again, more closely, carefully. Jaina lowered her face and contemplated Force-muddling his memory, but it was too late. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Only if you've been to Dantooine," she said with forced lightness and turned away. He didn't let her hostility deter him.

"It doesn't matter." There was an urgency in his voice that forced her to turn around again. "Take care of Grandma, will you? She's not the youngest anymore."

Wasn't it supposed to be the other way round? But, being the only girl among her siblings, Jaina had had a lot of practice taking care of her brothers. Which, incidentally, had not ended well. She pushed away the thought. Irritation made her voice sharper than she had intended it to be, especially since Janus seemed to be a fairly good person.

"She'll only take me to the Western Dune Sea."

"Still."

With that, he turned and headed back to where his colleague and supervisor were standing. From his back she couldn't read his mood. And why should she care? Turning away, she deliberately pushed every distraction to her mission from her mind.

"God bless him," Valia said as they finally departed. "Eleven grand-children, and only Janus here has something of mine. He can hear her, too."

She probably meant the Force, though her grasp of it had to be more instinct than ability to actually tap it. Jaina sighed: of all guides in Mos Eisley, the one she had to choose was the only Force-sensitive person. On the other hand, no desert guide in his right mind had wanted to lead her, so she probably had a point.

"We will reach the Eastern Dune Sea tomorrow." Valia was steering the speeder with the ease of practice. We'll have to cross it and the Jundland Wastes if we want to reach the Valley of the Spirits. And the Wastes…" She shook her head. "The Jundland Wastes are not to be travelled lightly."

"People keep telling me that," Jaina murmured. And wondered whether the bad feeling that was creeping up within her was a vision of the future, or just pure logic. She glanced behind them, but Mos Eisley was already disappearing from her view.

Her uneasiness remained.


	3. storm, encounter

_A/N: Sorry for the wait, and the short notice here: Thanks to irrelevantiskey and Neila Nuruodo for reviewing! I'm glad you found the story intriguing so far. Hopefully, you'll enjoy this chapter, as well._

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><p><strong>storm, encounter<strong>

Two days later, the wind picked up.

Valia had been staring at the sky when they had set off in the morning, squinting worriedly. "I hope we'll get to Orion City before the storm begins."

Great, Jaina thought sarcastically. Just what she needed: a storm.

Orion City was not a city. In fact, it wasn't even a village. It was a loosely connected agglomeration of moisture farms, each one almost invisible in the dry dust lands surrounding them and far enough apart that they did not even deserve to be dubbed _interconnected_. Valia did not stop at the first one. Jaina, whose throat was parched and who was unbearably hot underneath her cloak, who was exhausted, and, more than anything, bored – two days of yellow sand and nothing else, constant heat and only the presence of an old woman to keep her company when she would have preferred to make the trek alone had drawn her patience thin – turned to question her guide. The woman had anticipated her.

"I know some people at one of the farms," she said. "We'll be there soon."

Jaina sighed in annoyance and chose to ignore the desert runner's amused gaze. She didn't care what the woman thought. The heat was unbearable during day. The sun burned down relentlessly. The speeder's open cockpit had allowed for some kind of head wind during their flight, but even it had been hot and stifling. It was like breathing in fire: Jaina choked, now and then, and tried to wet her cracked lips but even her tongue seemed thick and parched. At least they had had enough water, though Valia had rationed it strictly. After two days, Jaina wished for nothing more than a cool bath and to never see Tatooine again. She closed her eyes and fantasized about the cool, shadow-filled halls of the Coruscant Temple and the humid forests of Yavin Four. For a second, she could hear the gurgling laughter of the waterfalls in the Hall of The Thousand Fountains. Suddenly, the air seemed humid and filled with the scent of plants and moss. Jaina kept her eyes closed, trying to hold on to the image – vision? – but it disappeared again quickly. Soon, she was back in the deserts of Tatooine again, the sun glowing down on her and sand itching against her skin.

"There we are."

They hadn't spoken for the remainder of the flight that day, but when Valia's voice resounded Jaina had already snapped to attention again. The runner's chosen destination did not look any different than the few moisture farms they had already passed. It was nestled against the ground, bent like an animal ducked in fear – or perhaps poised for attack. The small, round windows were covered with a thick layer of dust, some of them already drawn in preparation to the storm that was now looming at the edges of her vision. The sky had not changed, but a wind had picked up. A child was playing in the shadow of the farm house, a small desert dog at its side. At the sound of the speeder, it dashed into the house and returned, seconds later, with what was presumably its mother. The farmer's wife stood, shielding her hand against the sun, while Jaina and Valia disembarked. Her hand, Jaina noticed, was clenched around something hidden in her apron. Her danger sense whispered warnings, and Jaina tensed. When the woman recognized the old guide, though, she relaxed visibly and let go of the child to welcome Valia warmly. While Jaina wearily took in their surroundings (sand, Force-forsaken sand everywhere) the two women exchanged the newest gossip. Both of them turned towards the West, the direction the wind was coming from, and frowned, worriedly. Jaina silently willed the woman to invite them inside, to offer them something to drink and to let them stay for the night, but Valia seemed to have a different idea. Some credits were exchanged and the woman disappeared into the house. Not long after, their water skins were refilled and the child had brought them three securely packed bags which probably contained new rations, and then Valia embraced the woman, waved at the child and returned to their speeder. Jaina hurried to follow her, frowning.

"We're not going to stay here?"

The runner squinted at the sky again. "Maron has no place for guests, and her husband will be back soon. But there is an abandoned farm at the outskirts of Orion. The people here look after it. It's equipped for travelers staying there for a night."

"Fan_tastic_." An abandoned moisture farm and an oncoming storm, this was getting better and better. And the wind picked up as they left the vicinity of Maron's farm. From the corner of her eyes, Jaina saw the woman ushering the boy inside, then, the last windows were barricaded. Valia grunted as she fought to keep the speeder on course against a particularly strong gust of wind. With it, whirlwinds of sand lifted from the ground and danced in the evening air. The hull of the speeder resounded with the impact of a million of tiny grains. Jaina was glad for her goggles. But the wind tore at her cloak and whipped down her hood, and she could feel the sand grate against her skin and bury in her hair before she was able to pull it up again. Cursing loudly, she secured it somehow, at the same time trying to bury their rations somewhere they wouldn't collect too much of dust. She had no idea why she cared – the sand was in her mouth already anyway – but still, she tried. In the small calm that followed, she managed to pull her mask over her nose. The speeder lurched forwards as Valia hit the speed pedal.

"We'll make it," she yelled over the howling of the speeder's engines and Jaina clenched her teeth and concentrated on holding on to their packs. Another gust of wind slammed into them and both women tried to shrink into their seats, trying to present the smallest obstacle possible for the wind. Jaina had stopped cursing loudly, but only because sand was getting into her mouth. Her hands clenched. In moments like these she wanted to be the one behind the controls, wanted to trust her own abilities and experience in order to out-maneuver the storm. It was a force of nature, but she had the Force, after all. But instead, she was forced to watch her guide steer their craft. Valia did so with the calmness and assuredness of an experienced speeder pilot. But still, Jaina ached to fly. X-wings were different than normal speeders, she thought almost angrily. X-wings demanded control, patience and skill. X-wings were piloted by one person only, and this person needed the self-confidence necessary to not only to think certain things were possible but also to actually go and do them, no matter how unrealistic. An X-wing pilot only depended on himself and that was why Jaina loved them. Of course, there had been a time- She clamped down on the thought violently and drew on the Force to calm herself. X-wings were far superior to speeders like this one, and there was no sense in wishing for something she would not get.

Valia's destination arose from the desert sands like a sand worm: slowly and oddly majestically, despite its worn and faded look. Dust-colored walls, the round windows apparently barred by something she recognized as corrugated metal sheets, the door closed and bolted. All in all, it was a desperate, abandoned feeling the place gave off and Jaina couldn't help but shiver. The wind had picked up and the time between the gusts had shortened during the last two hours until the speeder had been buffeted by storm winds almost continuously. Valia had kept their course but the speeder's motor didn't sound too healthy anymore, angrily fighting the winds that tried to throw him off-course. They parked the speeder in the wind-shadow of a surprisingly well-kept shed. Jaina waited while Valia fumbled around and opened the doors, then they pushed the vehicle inside. Each grabbing their packs and the extra rations, they navigated their way towards the farm building. Talking was useless at this point. The winds were lashing out, the storm now close enough Jaina could feel its force and danger almost physically. Valia seemed to duck under the clouds of dust and sand that whipped through the desert as if they were nothing while the Jedi, though not even remotely tall, had to throw herself against the oncoming gusts with all her strength. Her danger sense was spinning. An empty bucket suddenly sailed towards her, caught in the wind's grasp, and she both ducked it and then averted it with the Force so it would not hit her guide instead. At the same time, the wind ripped at her cloak and she was thrown off balance. Jaina used the Force in order to save herself from falling and cursed.

"Stang."

Even her voice sounded scratchy, like sand paper grinding against the rusty metal of an old hyper drive. She gagged on the sand that entered her mouth, coughed and refused to swallow lest she made it worse. Righting herself after a few seconds, an instinct made her whirl around, but there was nothing behind her except more wind and more sand. And then, suddenly, the structure of the abandoned farm house loomed up in front of them, Valia stopped and a dark opening appeared. Jaina stumbled through and together they threw themselves against the door, fighting the winds and the sand, until it closed with an audible _click._

Darkness.

Darkness, and Valia's muttering, rustling of cloth. Jaina folded into herself and coughed, coughed, coughed. Fumbling for her water flask, she rinsed her mouth, but still, the memory of sand (and some tangible remains of it, surely) – were left in her sore throat. Darkness, and a stinging ache in her lungs, the musty air of the empty building and a tingling sense of something she couldn't place, and then – light. Jaina released the breath she had not known she was holding and dropped her bag. The old farmhouse had been stripped of everything, even the separating walls. It presented one large room. In some corners, residue of piping and wiring extended from the wall and had been carefully covered and disconnected. On the ground, mouse droppings – at least she _hoped_ they were mouse droppings – and dust gathered. In some places one could still see where walls had separated different rooms.

"It's not a first-class hotel," Valia said cheerfully, "But it's a quite nice place."

"At least we're out of the storm," Jaina muttered, her voice painfully hoarse, and Valia chuckled.

"It will be over soon. You'll see, desert storms have a devastating force, but they do not last long. Tatooine's never angry for long."

Ignoring her guide's strange propensity to speak about her home planet as if it was a living being, Jaina set her bags down carefully and started digging for their small gas cooker. The food Maron had provided them with made a nice addition to their ration bars and stale water. They had some kind of filled bread squares that tasted foreign and spicy. Jaina, used to ration bars, was surprised at how even a little of the pastries were able to fill her up quickly. They also ate the strange fruit the farmer's wife had given them, Valia claiming it to be too soft and squishy to carry it with them when they left. When they were finished, the woman produced a small bag of sweets, smiling happily.

"Maron makes the best moon cakes you'll ever eat."

And they were good. Even Jaina had to agree.

Outside, the storm had, if possibly, become even stronger. Leaning back in the dim darkness that was only punctuated by Valia's flickering storm flare, listening to the wind that was pelting the house, it was almost… calming. Jaina was keenly aware of her mission, and that time was of essence. At the same moment she knew there was nothing she could do to make the storm move faster, so she settled into the familiar rhythm of preparing food, eating and cleaning up. The wind kept lashing against the walls and the door of the dark building, and the coldness of the night began to creep into the structure. The stone was still warm from the day, though. Leaning back against the wall, Jaina looked at her guide and wondered: why was a woman like her a desert runner? And how had she known her when they first had met?

"You are Force-sensitive, aren't you?"

"Force-sensitive?" The old woman looked up from where she was sharpening her hunting knife and _humph_-ed, dismissively. "No offense, girl, I know the Force works for you. But there are older powers."

Jaina couldn't decide whether to be insulted or curious, so she was both. Crossing her arms, she glared. "What is it, then?"

"Tatooine, girl." Valia half-closed her eyes and smiled. "The planet. Haven't you heard it?"

A decade and a half ago, the idea of living planets would have had amused her greatly. After Zonama Sekot, however…

"You mean, the _planet_ is _alive_?"

Valia smiled, rummaged through her bag and produced her pipe. "Hm. Is it?"

Great. Answering questions with more questions: the old, familiar and annoying trait of teachers all over the galaxy. But Jaina wasn't a padawan anymore, and she did not care much for the mysteries of a planet she would soon be off from and never visit again. It probably was for the best if she just gathered her strength and slept a while. They would continue on foot tomorrow since there would only be sparse opportunities to refuel the speeder and she did not want to risk being targeted by Tusken Raiders.

"Whatever."

Valia smiled indulgently. "She has been calling out to you, too."

Jaina laughed, a sound of surprise that was startled out of her. "Well, if Tatooine needs something from me it can get in line. There are at least half a dozen people who want me to do something for them, some who would like to kill me and even more who expect me to fail."

Her guide frowned. "It's not like that. She-"

And there, suddenly, it was again. Jaina tensed. It was faint, but growing rapidly. A sense of _knowledge_, the feeling of security that came with the ease of years of practice. The blips on the radar she had experienced the past two days had formed into steady signals, and everything in Jaina screamed in alarm. She pressed a finger to her lips to silence Valia who, mercifully, understood, gripped her knife, extinguished the storm flare and did not move any further. Jaina crept to the door and waited.

Her danger sense was howling in concert with the storm.

She had expected someone to follow her. There always was some misguided, poor smuggler or otherwise half-cooked criminal who thought he could benefit from catching the small, young and – most important of all – lone traveler with enough credits to buy himself a guide arriving at the cesspit of the galaxy. (Han Solo always had had a way with words.) She had also expected Hutts, Jawa clans, or even Tusken Raiders. What she had not expected, though, was to be followed by someone who was actually _good_ at doing his job. Because Jaina had sensed him before – but she had not connected the dots. She cursed herself silently.

The door opened, almost without any sound, and the thorny sand suddenly was everywhere. A heart-beat to check the situation, and the hunter obviously decided that getting out of the storm was more important than the danger of what he was possibly getting into. Jaina, her eyes now used to the dark, saw a bulky figure, a flash of movement too smooth to belong to just another moisture farmer (_Sorry Uncle Luke_), heard the sound of a blaster being set to stun (kill?) and catapulted herself forward.

The stranger threw himself to the side.

Jaina followed smoothly, unbalancing him, her hands going for his weapon. The heavy sound with which he connected with the floor showed her he was wearing armor – Force, a _Mandalorian!?_ – and he was _strong_. He caught his own fall, twisted into an arch and exploded from the ground with enough force to catapult her away. Jaina, holding on to his weapon and twisting it as hard as she could used the momentum she gained, landed on her feet. He let go of his blaster which immediately flashed an orange light – wonderful, a _timer, _a Mandalorian all right – and dropped into a low fighting stance. If he was a Mandalorian, Jaina decided in a flash, he had enough other surprises up his sleeve – literally – so she went for him with a roundhouse kick.

He _blocked_ her.

And cursed, his voice muffled under the obligatory mask, and grabbed for her foot but she spun away. Lifting an arm, he pointed it at Jaina – _did he really want to use rockets in an old farm house?! _– and she grabbed him with the Force and tore him towards her, short-circuiting his sleeve launcher with the Force at the same time with the technique Jedi used to blur cameras and Corran Horn had _refined_. The small servo motors died with a broken hiss. The bounty hunter – because it was a bounty hunter, Bantha shit, why here, why now – did not waste time checking his gear. Knives sprang from his sleeves into his hands, one in each, and he slashed at Jaina. She leaned away from one and blocked the other, did not waste time punching his solar-plexus when his arms fell to reveal an – intended – opening in his cover but hooked her leg behind his knees and _pulled_, and both of them went to the ground. And that was when Valia turned on her lamp again on full power, shining it into the intruder's eyes.

"Hold it," she demanded, imperiously, pointing a blaster at the stranger. Jaina weighted herself down with the Force, trapped the man's arms with her arms and his body with hers and blinked to adjust her eyes to the sudden light.

The bounty hunter, of course, wasn't wearing a mask but rather a helmet whose visor was closed. Jaina could hear heavy breathing and supposed she sounded similar. The helmet also meant that he wasn't half as blinded as she was, she realized, and desperately hoped Valia had it under control. In the corner of her field of view, the orange timer blinked.

The man looked up at her steadily. "If I don't get my blaster in the next sixty seconds, we're all going to die."

His voice sounded gruff under the helmet, but his accent definitely was _not_ Mando'a. Jaina's heart leapt into her throat.

Valia didn't budge. "Then get it, but slowly."

The light of the flare dimmed. Nose to nose as she was with the hunter, Jaina could see his visor brighten up again to adjust to the new light conditions.

"It would be nice if I could move a bit," the man said without moving. "Solo?"

No mistake, then. No illusion.

Jaina recoiled as if hit by a whip. She was on her feet in an instant, backing up until her back hit the wall. The man in front of her scrambled to stand: he was taller than her, which wasn't difficult. She couldn't see his features but knew he had dark hair, equally-dark eyes and a scar at his right temple. His posture that told her so much about whom he had been and always would be was rigid and his shoulders tense. The beskar' gam he wore was old and dented, his cloak dirty and full of sand, and a few days in the desert had probably given him the dark shadow of a stubble. But it was him: she would have recognized him everywhere. In an abandoned moisture farm in the midst of Tatooine's Dune Sea, Jaina was looking at Jagged Fel.

"_What the hell_?"

"Of course you would know each other," Valia said dryly.


	4. past lives

_A/N: For Trickfortreat, who was IrrelevantIsKey, who requested this story in the first place. Thank you for reviewing - I hope you'll continue to enjoy the story!_

* * *

><p><strong>past lives<strong>

"It seems you're not only a good bounty hunter but a pretty good-looking one, too."

In Jaina's eyes, Valia was inappropriately friendly with the Chiss-born, exiled ex-fighter-pilot-now-bounty-hunter who was currently sitting across from them. He'd taken off his helmet and cloak but kept on the beskar'gam. It probably was a sign of how much he mistrusted her, or he had simply grown so used to it he didn't even notice the weight anymore. With Jag, everything was possible. In the white light of Valia's storm flare, he seemed… _Older. _

It had been almost nine years since they had last spoken.

Or six, if one counted their conversation above the jungles of Tenupe where she had told him to eject after she had disabled his star fighter. When he hadn't followed her suggestion she had turned away and left, never looking back. She couldn't have said what she had been thinking at that time: they had been on different sides of a war, and both had given their best to make victory theirs. To protect what they had wished to protect. There had been no message after that last encounter, no rumors of his survival, and Jaina had – guiltily, perhaps – never tried to find out what exactly had happened after his fighter had been shot down. She hadn't wanted to know. Losing him had been painful, but it had been an old pain, even though the injury was fresh: It had been long over between them, after all.

And then he came back.

He had returned four years later, first in form of a rumor that stuck in her head and couldn't be chased away and then in form of a masked and armed warrior who could be observed on the surveillance tapes of the entrance halls of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, a man who had marched in and had asked for a meeting with the Grand Master. She hadn't met him then, though, so her image of him she carried with her even though she hated to be reminded of it did not change. He would, she had thought, always be young and arrogant to her: the fighter pilot she had first met before the Yuuzhan Vong war. The envoy from the Chiss Empire who had disregarded the high dignitaries and important politicians on a diplomatic meeting and had cut straight through the crowd to the female pilot who had shot him down in a simulator mission earlier. Jagged Fel, her onetime second-in-command, friend and lover.

He was older now. The lines in his face made his features look harder and bitterer. Strangely, he seemed less arrogant and more centered and she reminded herself why it probably was that way: he was an exiled fighter pilot without a home, a family and even a name who only had one thing left. It wasn't revenge. Revenge was a path into darkness; Jaina had been taught the maxim and had experienced it herself. Jagged Fel did not want revenge, otherwise Uncle Luke would never have taken him up on his offer. He wanted justice. He wanted to bring down the person that had been responsible for his family's dishonor and public shame. He had worked as a bounty hunter for almost a year before he had approached the Grand Master, asking for information and offering his help in the search for a rouge Jedi, and Uncle Luke had agreed. But even during the time he had been cooperating with the Jedi, during the days he had almost constantly been at the Jedi Temple, Jag had kept his distance from Jaina. He hadn't greeted her in the beginning and even after months of working with Zekk they hadn't exchanged more than a few words. It felt strangely intimidating now, being in the same room as him. Jaina couldn't remember the last time they had simply sat together and talked: human memory was selective like that. She remembered the first time they had met – the Chiss commander and the Princesses daughter – the first time he had kissed her, their first good-bye. Months, years at his side, flying and training and fighting. _As you wish, Oh Goddess. _He'd always had a particular brand of humor, one she had come to love dearly, but his self-deprecation and dry sarcasm had often hidden it. _You're drawing yourself thin, and a weapon that is sharpened too much? It breaks, Jay._ And he'd always been able to look straight through her. _You have to come back, Jaina. Don't leave me. _How long, how often, how many small and even smaller things-

And then his voice, crisp and cool, telling her that he would return to Csilla.

All of it, their history, their lives together – every single moment – seemed so, so far away now. Jag was sitting in front of her and memories raced past her inner eye. It was like her old life was on display behind a transpariglass window and she could only observe it. She shook herself, forced herself to return his stare and not think of the past. She had to focus. That life had belonged to another Jaina: a Jaina who had two brothers, a Jaina who had not known the horrors of war and fight, of death and deception. A Jaina who had not trained with the most notorious Mandalorian bounty hunter of the galaxy in order to bring down her twin. That Jaina had been young, hopeful and naïve: that Jaina was dead, she supposed, so it was only fair that her memories died with her. And this wasn't the Jag she'd known years ago but a stranger who looked at her now, wearily eyed her with a stranger's eyes and a stranger's suspicion edged into them. Three years in the jungle of Tenupe and one year on the lower levels of Coruscant and other Force-forsaken planets had changed him. He had been stocky before, not excessively tall but bulky and compact. Now he was lean like a whip, muscled, his face edged and drawn. The scar at his right temple had colored a strand of his dark hair silvery white. And Jaina knew the source of the determination that was glowing in his eyes.

It was the same reason why Jaina was on Tatooine, after all.

"Why did Master Skywalker send you?" Jag finally broke the silence that had descended upon them like a stifling blanket. "I told him Alema Rar was my prey."

"There was no time," she replied coolly. "We received news that she had been sighed on Tatooine. We had to react immediately. Besides, Uncle Luke told you, didn't he, otherwise you wouldn't be here."

His eyes shrank to slits. "You could have waited for me."

"What part of _there was no time_ didn't you get?"

Her acidic reply heralded an uncomfortable silence. It always was the same with the two of them, Jaina thought bitterly. What they really were capable of was arguing. She'd never before encountered a person that was able to get to her as much as Jag could: his words, even his looks alone had been able to rub her in the wrong direction. Sparks on dry tinder. Two missiles on collision course, a blazing supernova. And the worst thing was-

"I really hate to interrupt your fruitful discussion," Valia broke the silence. "As your guide, I would like to know: What will happen next? Will you return to Mos Eisley tomorrow, or continue on?"

"This is not your hunt," Jaina said.

"Try to stop me."

She could. Jaina could knock him out then and there, and both of them knew. Both of them knew, too, that it would cost her. She glowered at him.

"Don't provoke me."

"You won't do anything to me," Jag replied, as icily as her glare was fiery. "You left me behind once, you know what will happen if you do it again."

It stung. It shouldn't have been able to – she had done so much more, had hurt so many people – and still. It felt like a physical blow to her solar plexus, and Jaina had to take a deep breath and draw on the Force in order to calm herself.

"It makes no sense to send two hunters when the prey –"

"It is Alema Rar," Jag interrupted her. "You might need help." Deliberately, he touched the beskar'gam that covered his chest, the crush gauntlets next to him. "You should use all the help you can get, and I will help you defeat her. I just ask to be the one who delivers the killing blow."

"She was one of us, once." Jaina's arguments were flailing, lose threads in the wind, and she hated it.

Alema Rar's story was one of terrible loss, grief and rage, and the rage had burned within her until it had resulted in her succumbing to the Dark Side. Oh, and Jaina could understand. Not the being-a-slave-part, not the having-to-sell-herself-part. Not the loneliness and desperation of growing up without parents that protected you. This was something she couldn't understand, only guess, and guesses were never accurate enough to gauge the full extent of a person's feelings. But there was one thing Jaina got completely: Alema had _lost her sister_. Anakin's death had brought Jaina to the edge, had her almost tumble over it and into the grasps of the Dark Side. But Jaina had resisted, or maybe had only resisted because she had been held back. Because she had the support and the love of her family (and Jag's, too). Alema, whom had Alema had? Jaina hadn't known her well enough to be sure there had been _anyone_ in her life after the loss of her sister and her Master, as well. As it was, she had succumbed to pain and grief, which had led in her being more susceptible to the whispers of the Sith Lomi Plo and her Dark Nest and her playing a crucial role in the Swarm War. The Chiss hated her. Alema was one of the reasons why Jag had been exiled from his home and had been denied his family heritage and honor. She was the reason why he had been working as a paid assassin for a year, and then had turned to the Jedi Temple to offer his services in exchange for help in finding her. And despite his frequent visits to the Temple, despite the many times she had seen him in his meetings with Zekk and Corran, Jaina had not been able to draw out more than a stiff greeting from him. She also hadn't dared to talk to him when he ignored her so pointedly. Maybe it was shame that had made her avoid the man who was now sitting cross-legged on the other side of her small fire. Maybe it was what she had read in his eyes, that first time they had seen each other again in the Temple. It had been hurt, but there had been anger, too. _Hate. _She hadn't thought it could still hurt like that, even after all these years. It was that hate, the unchecked emotions in his eyes – so little like him – that had made her avoid him at all costs, even to the point that she had disobeyed the Grand Master when he had ordered her to work with Zekk and Jag on trying to find Alema again. She just _couldn't. _She couldn't stand the pain in his eyes and, at the same time, the pain in her heart. Why did she feel hurt? She had no right to, she knew. She was the one who had betrayed him, after all. But hadn't he betrayed her, too?

_You left him to die. Of course he hates you._

So here they were again.

"You know there is no redeeming possible when they are gone like that." He looked at her, steadily. "You know sometimes people fall, and never can be brought back again."

Jaina had thought his earlier words had been painful. Now, she didn't even have breath left to reply.

Jag was not looking at her any longer, either way. "I suppose we have the same destination from now on."

"Not that this isn't interesting," Valia said. "But a trek through the desert should never be undertaken lightly. You will need provisions for at least ten more days, for starters."

Jag nodded, slightly mollified. "I brought my own provisions. I will have to fill up on my water rations now and then, but then, probably, so will you."

"Correct." The old woman eyed the bounty hunter one last time appraisingly, then turned away. "I guess that's settled, then. I will get some sleep."

Without another word, she burrowed into her bed roll and turned her back on them. The storm flare shone steadily, white light in an otherwise dark room. Jaina took a deep breath, and another one, but the pain did not subside. Jag's last words – _they can't be brought back, you know that – _echoed in her head, again and again. It grew worse with every second, Jacen's face dancing in front of her mind's eye. Darth Caedus, Jacen but not Jacen, her twin but her enemy, and she had fought him, she had-

_Be calm, little one._

The touch was soothing, calming, ancient and wise, and Jaina clung to it with every fiber of her being. The calm the presence seemed to radiate filled her like warmth, drove away her anger and her terror and helped her to concentrate. She focused, deliberately, and tried to analyze the situation. When she had been a teenager, she had been prone to bursts of stubbornness. _One day_, Aunt Mara had told her, half-amused and half-exasperated, _one day you'll encounter someone who is as stubborn as you are, and then you'll understand. _And oh, stang, Jaina _did _understand. She cursed, silently, then loudly. Valia's lips twitched upward, proving that, despite her closed eyes, she was far from having fallen asleep. Jag's eyes, dark and steady, answered hers unwaveringly. And the worst thing was: she even _wanted_ him to be the one to take in Alema Rar so he could purge the shame that was resting on his family and his family's name. She figured she owed him that much, at least. But the thought of spending the next few days in Jag's company made her resolve shrivel. Before she could find more reasons to refuse his request, she cursed again, colorfully, and turned away.

"Valley of the Spirits," she said. Not telling him was the worse option, since she was pretty sure he would leave as soon as the storm ended if she didn't allow him to join them. He would make his own way through the Dune Sea and across the Jundland Wastes, and he stood far better chances if he had a guide and someone to have his back. And she hated seeing him, but she didn't want him to die. It was crazy. But it was logical, too.

His reaction to her abrupt change of topics was barely a twitch of his brow.

"What a fitting name."

"Wonderful!" Valia snorted, _still_ not asleep. "Seems like we are three now." She stared at Jag, long and hard. "At least you're not stupid enough to insist on making it there by yourself."

Jag looked slightly insulted. Jaina sighed.

"Get some sleep, children," Valia said, matter-of-fact. "We still have days of trekking before us, and trust me, the Dune Sea does not have places like this. You'd better use the time right now."

As if, Jaina thought scathingly, she would be able to sleep with Jag in the same room. It worked surprisingly well, though. The wind was still lashing against the old walls of the abandoned moisture farm, the storm flare burned steadily, and on the other side of the room the rustling of Jag stretching out for the night could be heard. Jaina fell asleep quickly. This time she killed both Jacen and Jag in her dreams. _We're twins, Jaina._ Jacen's eyes held the light they had carried when they had been children at the Academy and their only worry had been how to best avoid the meditation sessions. _I love you, _Jag said. _More than my life. But it won't ever be enough, will it?_ And Jaina woke up gasping and sweating and cold at the same time. The wind had subsided, as Valia had predicted. From the other side of the almost extinguished fire, no sound was heard.

* * *

><p>The next day dawned, calm and clear. No sign hinted at the fact that just twelve standard hours before a storm had raged. Sand had long ago covered their tracks from the day before. Even shortly after sunrise, the warmth already seemed to seep into the ground. Jaina, wrapped in her sand-colored robes, donned her mask and goggles, shivering, and tried to warm herself with the knowledge that she would be cursing the heat only a few hours later. Jag was strapping on his crush gauntlets – had he <em>slept<em> in his armor? – and was glancing at the sky. Two suns, bright and burning.

"Desert, huh?" Jaina asked, just to fill the silence. He glanced at her and shrugged, wordlessly.

The start of another beautiful day.

"Ready, children?" Valia waved, almost enthusiastically. A few minutes ago she had emerged from the shed where they had left the speeder, carefully pocketing something. When Jag has asked her whether she would leave her vehicle just like that, she had smiled. "I might leave it, but it will be of no use for whomever might find it."

Jag's brows had wandered into his hairline. "Won't the farmers just forage the parts?"

Valia waved off his concerns. "You have to watch the strangers in the desert, not the foreigners. They don't live after the Old Codex. No moisture farmer would take someone else's belongings as long as the other one has a need of them."

Which was a pretty wide-spread definition, actually, but Jaina had already accepted that this was somewhat common on Tatooine. And then she found herself walking, her pack settled between her shoulders. In front of her, Valia's small figure in her grey and brown robes all but was invisible in the uniform surroundings. Merely her silver hair shimmered. She was also carrying a rifle across her back. Without a further word, Jag started off, his boots making crunching noises in the sand. His cloak covered his armor completely, his helmet covered his head. Jaina wondered what kind of weapons he carried with him right now, and whether one of them was meant for her. Then he turned his head and caught her staring at him, and something flared up inside her.

"You speculated on catching up to Valia and me."

It came out harsher than she had intended it, but she had intended it to sound harsh in the first place. The Chiss bounty hunter answered her challenging gaze without emotion, not even pretending he didn't know exactly what she was talking about. "Why do you think that?"

"Because you're not stupid," she said, trying to be reasonable. "You knew you wouldn't be able to cross the Dune Sea all by yourself. And still you came to Orion City without a guide. You were planning on catching up, and on continuing on with us."

His eyes were unreadable under his helmet's visor. "You would have done the same."

Jaina bristled. "You could have contacted me first."

"I apologize," Jag answered, his voice icy as the breath of Hoth. "I should have realized you were waiting for a message."

"You were the one who refused to even talk to me since you returned to Coruscant," she shot back.

"You left me to die on a jungle planet," he said, his voice so taut it would have snapped had it been a string. "Maybe you understand, Solo, why I don't really feel like talking to you."

The deliberate use of her last name was a blow to the gut. And it made her angry – made her furious. Jaina's fists tightened and she pressed her lips together, hard, opening her mouth to respond sharply-

_He was hurt, and so were you. Do not lose yourself in darkness, child._

With iron self-restraint, she reigned in her temper. Being angry at Jag was of no use. The success or failure of a relationship always depended on the people actually in the relationship. Theirs had always been explosive and final: a supernova, a black hole. Extremes, like the two of them, and while they sometimes fit together perfectly they had clashed often enough on other days. And Jag had decided on leaving when Jaina needed him most. And Jaina had left Jag behind to die on a jungle planet. If it was about balance – and it wasn't, not in this aspect – they should have been even by now. But the pain in her heart told her differently. If she still hurt from the rejection suffered at his hand, he had every right to feel hurt and angered by Jaina's actions. And it was of no use right now; being angry at her situation did not help. Rather the opposite: if she encountered Alema the way she was now, she would most likely fall prey to the Dark Side as the Twi'lek had. Oh, it was so easy, just letting go. But when had Jaina ever taken the easy way out? Not in the past, and she did not want to do so in the future, either. Closing her eyes, she emerged herself in the Force: swirling and alive and so, so familiar. Painfully familiar, beautifully familiar, on the verge of burning her in its intensity but still warm and welcoming. With every breath, the darkness receded. When she had calmed down sufficiently she realized Jag had started to follow Valia, leaving her behind.

_Probably don't deserve any better,_ she thought with bitter humor.

Then, she ran over her mental checklist one last time: first aid kit, water, ration bars. A blaster and ammunition. Flint and tinder, her comlink. She doubted she would be able to contact anyone, but still it felt reassuring. A small assortment of knick-knacks she always carried with her, some tools. The weight of the light saber at her side – still hidden, in case they came across Tusken Raiders or caravans – was familiar and comforting.

"What are you waiting for, girl?" Valia called. Jaina took a deep breath, drew on the Force for hope and followed her guide and Jag into the desert.


	5. silver night, shadow moon

**silver night, shadow moon**

The second day of their journey since they had left the outskirts of Orion City and the abandoned moisture farm dawned. Hot, blinding, dusty: One day like the other. Jaina had given up on even trying to pretend she wanted to talk to Jag. It was mutual, so their trek was mostly spent in silence.

Valia led them well, steadily but not hasty. In the growing heat of Tatooine's twin suns Jaina could feel sweat run down her back and marveled at how the elder woman could look so calm and cool. If Jag felt the heat, he did not let it show. The fact irked her, like a rash she couldn't scratch. Everything annoyed her: the way none of her travel companions seemed to sweat and huff like she did, the hot sun, burning down relentlessly, the coldness during the night that had them roll into their thin bed rolls tightly and which still didn't offer warmth and peace. The way vultures sometimes cycled above their heads, their harsh cries piercing the silence. Waiting. Waiting for them to make one wrong step, make one wrong decision. Even the wind in the dunes was annoying, the constant rustling that blew fine sand into her face and found even the smallest crack in her cloak. It was all of that – and more. She was tired. She was wide awake. She wanted nothing more than to leave this Force-forsaken planet and she wanted to lay down and never get up again. Her lips were cracked and her throat parched, but she did not feel thirsty. She wanted to go home. She didn't want to see her family. She wanted Jacen back – and Anakin – and Mara, the way she had been _before_. The way all of them had been. Jaina wanted to turn back time: down, down, all the way down and backwards until she was a child again and her greatest fear was Mom finding out that she had dropped her favorite vase. She wanted to train with Jacen and watch Anakin sleep in his cradle, wanted to laugh with Zekk, Tenel Ka and Lowbacca without remembering being Joined and Anakin dying and Jag's voice from the speakers that connected her to the enemy and Jacen's golden eyes. She wanted-

The next thing Jaina consciously remembered was her step faltering and her balance slipping.

She fell onto her knees and hands, not hard but struggling to not sink into the soft sand and land in it face-first. Surprised, she drew back and eyed both her hands carefully, there was sand on her gloves but no other sign of an injury. Her legs felt normal, so why?

The answer came to her slowly: the heat. Perhaps dehydration, too.

It had to be a combination of that, and of her sleepless nights – nightmares, and Jag – and apparently, it had exhausted her more than she would have thought it would. At the same time, it was not only physical exhaustion that had made her stumble, she was aware of that. It was a not-so-subtle reminder that, while she had spent a few days in a bacta tank after her duel with Jacen, she had left the med bay as soon as she could stand. She hadn't cared – just had wanted to go home. Shortly after her return, Uncle Luke had asked her to follow Alema Rar, and here she was. Suddenly, she just felt tired to the bone. Jaina buried her face in both her hands and wanted to cry.

But Valia's presence, instead of disappearing in the distance, halted and moved closer again and without a second thought Jaina forced herself onto her feet again and continued on, ignoring her companions' frowns of surprise. Deliberately, she focused on other things: how the sand shifted beneath her feet, and what a difference it was to watch Valia glide over the sand and to listen to herself stomping and sliding across the quicksilver like a drunken bantha. Jag managed something in between a glide and her own, awkward stumbling. The sun glared down. Every inch of their bodies was covered by something: either by cloth, armor or goggles. It was hot, it was exhausting, and it was only the fourth day of their trek. Jaina, resigning herself to the facts, thought about Allana: her niece was able to find something good in even the worst possible situation. What would she say now? Jaina ignored the spike of pain that shot through her at the thought of _Jacen's_ daughter. She could almost hear the girl's voice: _At least, Auntie Jaina, it's not raining!_ _And that has to count for something, doesn't it? _The thought actually made her smile. Oh, the enthusiasm of childhood – she could only pray Allana would keep her curious and exploratory views on life even when she grew up.

The desert was endless.

Jaina had lost track of their direction almost immediately after the sand-colored walls of the abandoned moisture farm had disappeared from view. She was unable to pinpoint where they had come from, much less where they were going. It was only them: three people and an alien world. Endless, never-ending desert in all directions; sun, sand and heat. Jaina, used to the temperate climate of Coruscant and even the hot, humid jungles of Yavin, hadn't thought she'd come to loathe the dry desert climate of Tatooine that much. It felt like the planet was mocking her. Like fate was mocking her: the Sword of the Jedi, flame of hope. The flame, right now, was close to a heat-stroke. Her self-loathing turned to choked amusement over her own crybaby tendencies. What was wrong with her? Straightening her shoulders, she vowed to not let herself go another time.

"We don't have much water left."

It was a question more than a statement. Her voice sounded hoarse even to her ears and she cleared her throat. It felt scratchy, as if sand had even invaded her insides.

They had established a routine by now. Valia led them on. Jag followed, and Jaina brought up the rear. Jag had tried to protest this arrangement – mainly because he hated the idea of Jaina in his back, she guessed – but Valia had overruled him.

"It's not a bad idea to have someone with a danger sense have our backs, you know."

And that had been it.

At her question Jag turned half-way and froze again, facing forwards again and calling out to their guide. At his voice, their guide stopped and waited until they had closed the gap between them.

"We'll reach a water reservoir this evening," Valia said and winked. "We've made a good time."

She continued on, looking back over her shoulder at the Jedi and the bounty hunter following her closely.

"You're doing good. At least," the sudden smirk was visible only in the way her wrinkles crinkled around her eyes, and in the almost unnoticed tilt in her voice. "…For a bunch of spoilt Coruscanti tourists."

Jaina rolled her eyes and, to her own surprise, felt the corners of her lips twitch upwards.

* * *

><p>To Jaina's perception of their journey it wasn't of importance to find a guide for the crossing of the Dune Sea for navigational purposes – she supposed the sun and the sky and the stars at night allowed some kind of orientation. No. Valia's true worth was in the fact that she <em>knew<em> the Dune Sea, and she knew its secrets.

"What's that?" Jag asked, shielding his eyes with his hand. "It seems…" For the lack of a better word, he shrugged.

"Green?" Valia asked, her eyes sparkling. "It's not an illusion, bounty hunter. What you see is an oasis."

Jaina, from her position at the rear, could only see some specks of _something_ that appeared to be green and alive. Sighing, she stopped, shielding her eyes with her other hand. Jag must have some kind of binoculars installed in his helmet visor – he surely had – because the only thing Jaina could see was a spec of _something_ at the horizon. It still was two hours of trekking until they finally reached the outskirts of something that seemed somewhat misplaced in the desert landscape: palm trees and colorful flowers clinging to rocks, palms and stone walls. The small oasis seemed like it had only survived due to its secluded position at the base of a rock formation, thus protected from the harsh desert winds, and due to the water that trickled down the rock at different places, forming a small, crystal-clear lake at the foot of the wall. Kneeling, Jag tested the water, sniffing it and probably analyzing it, as well.

"Seems like we can drink it."

"Of course you can drink it," Valia huffed. "This is the Dune Sea. There is no pollution here, no poison or illness like on Coruscant and so many other Core worlds."

Jag shrugged. "You can never be careful enough."

Two of Tatooine's thee moons were already visible in the sky.

While Valia started a small fire and Jag continued his examinations of their surroundings, Jaina stood at the strange line that divided desert from oasis and just looked. It felt unreal: the heavy, sweet scent of the flowers climbing the wet rock formation, the trickling of water when, a day ago, the only sound she had heard had been sand and wind. Maybe her eyes had gotten used to the scantiness of the desert around her, because now the colorful, _living_ details seemed so much clearer to her. The soft edges of the leaves, the glimmer of mica in the rusty red of the rock walls – Jaina took a deep breath and tried to process the impressions that were flooding her, not because they were grand and loud, but because they were so… So small. Tiny flowers, tiny droplets. A tiny bird, fluttering down to take a bath, droplets of water on his plumage sparkling like diamonds. _Like birds in a durasteel factory._ She'd never understood what her Master had been trying to tell her, all those years ago. Now, finally, the meaning was clear.

"Girl." Valia waved at her, a wooden spoon in her hand. "Get over here, and bring the provisions."

Dinner consisted of some kind of stew, made from the freeze-dried rations they carried with them and water from the small pond at the feet of the rocks. While Jaina re-filled their water bottles and Jag ran a small perimeter check – she was glad for it, since it meant she would not have to do it herself – Valia had dug around in the ground near the pond, bringing forth moist sand mixed with even darker soil and, finally, a hand full of unshapely, reddish roots. Humming in satisfaction, she had rolled them into the embers of the fire and had let them cook. When ready they had a floury, soft texture and taste that reminded Jaina of something she could not put her finger on. From their perch at the foot of the oasis, close to the small water pond but far enough to not disturb other, four-legged visitors, they could see the sun sinking behind the horizon and the great, golden ripples of the Dune Sea. First it was day, then the light dimmed and suddenly the darkness was complete. The temperature dropped almost instantly. Jaina pulled the material of her cloak tighter around her shoulders and was glad for the piece of clothing which she had inwardly cursed so often before.

"It's almost time."

"Pardon me?" Jag said, turning towards Valia, who had spoken. The old woman had wrapped herself into her cloak and was a dark shadow against the darkness of their surroundings.

"For the lunar eclipse."

Jaina risked a glance at Jag and saw him frown. He had taken off his helmet and visor. His dark hair was tousled, sticking up where sweat and heat had plastered it to his head first and he then had mussed it with his hand.

"It happens every millennium," their guide said, pointing skywards. Her pipe was hanging in her hand, seemingly forgotten. "Tatooine's three moons align completely. The people of the desert say when lovers see the shadows of the three moons kissing in the sand…"

"What happens then?" Jag. The fact that he even asked, did not just snort disinterestedly or disdainfully, surprised Jaina. A few years ago he would not have cared about things like that. Maybe he was trying to be polite, or maybe he was trying to get on Valia's good side. And it seemed to work: she didn't see the woman smile, but she could almost feel it. Not for the first time she asked herself how Force-sensitive Valia really was.

"That depends on whom you ask."

Jaina snorted, unable to remain quiet any longer. "Whatever."

"You don't believe in legends, girl?" Valia's eyes were weary, but her smile remained.

"I believe in many things," Jaina said without hesitation. "Fairy-tales are not among the things I do believe in."

"Once upon a time, child, you would have been a fairy-tale, as well."

"You mean the Jedi?" Jag interrupted before Jaina could protest.

"I mean the Jedi. Good and evil, Jedi and Sith. Light and dark – life and death. It's the thing every fairy-tale is based upon, isn't it?"

Jaina opened her mouth to contradict and was surprised to hear Jag's voice once again. "Every story has a true core."

Valia smiled. "You're an intelligent boy. And good-looking, did I mention that already?"

Jaina sighed and rolled her eyes. Jag, who had opened his mouth to answer something, caught her grin. For a second, they shared the moment: wariness in their bodies but alertness in their minds. Then he caught himself and looked away again, his shoulders stiffening. Something inside her twisted, painfully. Rising abruptly, she shoved her water skin and the second ration bar back into her pack savagely.

"I'll take the first watch."

* * *

><p>Jaina was used to the soft darkness of Yavin Four, where nights did not last long and brought little relief from the humid, warm air. Nights on Coruscant were different again: black-and-white-and-blinding all at once, sharp-edged, brightly lit and filled with sound. Coruscant never slept. Darkness never descended completely, except for the underground world of the lower levels. The nights of Tatooine were silver-light and shadow. Contrasting, sharp, the harsh line of dunes against the black sky, and yet – softer. Moon light and desert wind and strangely soothing.<p>

On the other side of the softly glowing embers, something moved. Jag shifted on his bed roll and rose. Jaina was struck by how he moved: graceful, easy and cautious. He was still wearing his beskar'gam. Something caught in her throat: he looked ridiculously young in the light of the three moons. And then the streak of white hair flashed silver and age settled unto him like snow settled onto the soft forests of Naboo. He looked like someone else, someone she didn't know. A stranger. Jag was a stranger to her in many ways.

The bounty hunter stretched and slid down onto the ground next to her, carefully avoiding getting to close.

"There's something I need to tell you," he said. Deliberately, he met her eyes.

"What?" Jaina's voice was steady, and she was proud of it.

"Master Jade Skywalker."

"What about her?" Jaina couldn't conceal the hitch in her voice. A stab of fear shot through her, immediately followed by a cold, cold thought: _not again_. Her former Master – her aunt and, even more importantly, her friend – had been alive when she had left Coruscant, but just barely so. Only Ben's arrival had stopped Darth Caedus from delivering the killing blow. Maybe he hadn't wanted to kill in the presence of his former student and cousin. Maybe Ben had managed to distract him. Maybe Caedus had merely been surprised: maybe he had expected the poison to be stronger, to either kill Mara immediately or knock her out longer. Maybe, maybe and nothing of it mattered. Cilghal and all the Masters on Yavin Four had done their best to help her, but while the wounds on Mara Jade Skywalker's body had started to show signs of healing; she still had not awakened. When Uncle Luke had broken down and allowed for his wife to be taken away from Yavin, Coruscanti healers and physicians had spent considerable time trying to explain to the small gathering of Solos and Skywalkers that there was no way of predicting when Mara would regain consciousness, and whether she ever would open her eyes again. Uncle Luke hadn't even been able to listen to the physicians, Jaina remembered. She herself had stood, frozen like one of the Alderanian statues her mother liked so much, until her brain had processed the mere possibility of Mara _not_ being there one day. It had been impossible then, and still was impossible now.

Jag was still looking at her, a strange light in his eyes. "She woke up from the coma a few hours after you left."

Her pulse was hammering in her ears so loudly she barely heard his soft words, and it took even longer until their meaning registered. "She woke up?" She asked, her voice sounding weak and disbelieving even to her own ears. "She's not in a coma anymore?"

"No." Every other person might have smiled at being the bearer of such good news. Jag's face remained expressionless. "She was not yet allowed to leave the healing quarters the day I left, so she ordered me to come see her. She told me to send you her love."

"Thank the Force." Jaina breathed a sigh of relief, burying her face in both her hands. Her throat felt raw, as if she had screamed without pause. "Will she be okay?"

"She will be." Jag confirmed. "She was already getting at the Grand Master for not taking care of himself enough only three hours later."

"That sounds like her." Then, something occurred to Jaina. "Wait." This time she searched for his eyes, locked with his gaze and _held._ "Why are you telling me this only now? Since we met three days ago you've known that she was awake again, and you did not tell me?"

"Two days and three nights," Jag said stiffly, the strangeness gone from his eyes again.

"To hell! You should have told me _immediately_!" Jaina reigned in her volume but couldn't clamp down on the sudden fury coursing through her.

"I wanted to, but the first thing you did was attack me and try to start a fight, and since then you've ignored me!"

There was the voice in her head, screaming, that he hadn't done any different, but she was struck silent by the implications of his actions.

"You did it on purpose." Jaina's voice was a whisper in the darkness. "How long did you want to keep it from me?"

She sensed something. A flash of red, hot anger mixed with something she knew but couldn't place – until it came to her like an epiphany: _Hurt._ Sharp-edged anger, anger at Jaina, anger at Jag, at the entire world. It was faint, barely recognizable, and she flinched in surprise. The odd echo disappeared, leaving behind only the sound of her own blood rushing in her ears. Jag just stared at her, disbelieving, and Jaina felt shame roll over her like a tidal wave. For a long time, neither of them said anything.

"I'm sorry," Jaina finally whispered. "That was uncalled for. I know you wouldn't..."

"…Sink that low?" Jag completed her fragment.

"No," she protested. "No, it's just…" She bowed her head. "I am sorry. You wouldn't do something like that. I don't know how I thought… So many things happened, and I tried… I really, really tried…" She choked, realizing too late what she was doing and turning away from him abruptly. Here she was, and she was pouring out her heart to him like they still were friends. To think she had accused him of cruelty in the past.

"It's okay." Jag's voice was as gentle as the soft sound of the wind in the dunes. She probably was imagining the pain she read in his eyes, but only because it was dark, and she was pretty sure she shouldn't be able to know– "It's okay. Stop punishing yourself. There's nothing you could have done."

The moons were bright slivers of quicksilver against a black sky.

"How long will it take to reach the Valley of Spirits?"

"Two more days."

Jaina didn't dream that night. Exhausted, she collapsed on her bed roll, drifting off into nothingness almost instantly. She woke up a few hours later, her heart pounding in her ears once again. Realization felt like a bucket of ice water down her spine. She had thought it impossible: he wasn't Force-sensitive, not in the slightest. And even if there had been a connection between them once it had been the one of a normal couple. They had always been two normal human beings to her mind, not like Uncle Luke and Aunt Mara, or Anakin and Tahiri who shared – had shared – a Force bond so deep she had envied them, at times. And whatever Jag and she might have had a long time ago: Jaina's time as a Killik Joiner would have severed that, too.

But here she was, and she could _sense Jag in the Force. _


	6. wastelands

_A/N: Guesstimation: This story will probably have eleven chapters in total (counting the prologue and epilogue). Thanks, as always, to TrickforTreat._

* * *

><p><strong>wastelands<strong>

The morning of the next day of their journey seemed to last hours. Following Valia and Jag through the soon-searing-hot sand, Jaina tried to focus inward. Valia had seemed unconcerned when they had broken camp almost at the crack of dawn: lively and scathingly humorous, she had ignited her scorn before they had even left their resting place. In Jaina's opinion, cheerfulness and good humor in the morning were for those who managed it but, if they would be so kind, they could keep it to themselves. She didn't particularly despise it but she had never managed the knack of even _talking_ in the morning, preferring to finish her breakfast in silence until she was completely awake. Her restless night, however, had left her with the cold fingers of exhaustion still pressing onto her eyes and shoulders. And it wasn't as if they had time for breakfast, either.

There seemed no additional awkwardness between her and Jag. No more than the usual, at least. She had avoided looking at him, so she couldn't say how angry he was. It was childish – she knew – but she also didn't know how to talk to him, and what to say. Somehow the fact that she had thought him capable of withholding such kind of important information seemed to have angered him more than she would have expected.

"Kid, the way the two of you are dancing around each other has just crossed the border between just-about-amusing and painful-like-a-stick-up-my-ass. What the hell happened?"

Valia was not helping. Jag was filling up their water skins, but he was still within earshot. Jaina pretended being too busy packing up her stuff.

"Fine," the desert runner said. "Have it your way. Be miserable."

They trekked, mostly in silence, while the sun climbed higher and higher and took its place in the middle of the dirty-blue sky. More and more now, the view of the endless sand desert was being sprinkled with brownish rocks of the size of Jaina's fist. Underneath her cloak, Jaina felt like she was being cooked alive. Walking in the sand definitely was becoming easier, though. Small steps in quick succession, especially when walking up a dune, did the trick. Valia still seemed to float a few inches above the ground. Jag, on the other hand, often skidded and stumbled when the shifty underground refused to support his weight. Zekk, Jaina could imagine, would have re-invented at least two dozens of the swear words they had used when they were apprentices. Jag, however, trundled on, determined and without a comment. From time to time, she could hear his weapon clank against his beskar'gam. During her brief training stint with Boba Fett she had learned that Mandalorians moved almost noiselessly despite their armor, but Jag was not a Mandalorian-trained bounty hunter.

Jaina caught her thoughts wandering and yanked them back.

"This person you're both looking for," Valia said around midday, when the stones were slowly turning into rocks and the yellow sand was taking on a distinct, reddish hue. They were preparing to scale a dune that stretched out in all directions, which meant they couldn't just wander around it but had to ascend. The red sand was thin and powdery and stuck to every bit of exposed skin it could reach. "Does she have experience with this type of climate?" It was, even if carefully worded, a simple question. Would Alema Rar survive the harsh trek through the desert and to the Valley of Spirits? And if she survived, how would they meet her there? And, the question of all questions: why had she gone there?

Uncle Luke's tired face, devoid of any optimism, had been unnerving. This was the man who had even been able to find a smile for her even during the most challenging of times. _I am sorry I have to ask this of you, Jaina. _Had he seen something in his visions? Had his contacts spied the Dark Jedi on her way to Tatooine? How had he known where to send her, where to find Alema Rar? And if he'd known – why hadn't he known this earlier?

Jaina, glad her thoughts were taken off her previous topic, shook her head. Strands of her hair had fallen out of her braid, as usual, and were sticking to her nape wetly. "No. She's a survivor, though. And she is- she has the Force."

_She is a Jedi._ Words that weren't really true anymore. Alema Rar was as little a Jedi as Jaina was a bantha. The woman had attempted to kill Jaina's parents, and that was only the last point on a list that had been growing since she had incited the Swarm War. Still, it wasn't revenge Jaina was seeking. _I should be getting used to it lately, _Jaina thought, half-desperate, half-amused. _Hunting Sith without turning Dark. _She quickly stifled the self-loathing at the reminder of what had happened to her twin.

_You are the Sword. You fight to protect. _

Climbing the dune took them longer than expected. It was after midday that Jaina crested it, not particularly out of breath but feeling her pulse in her temples due to heat and exertion. Valia had already reached the top before her. Jag, who probably was carrying the greatest weight of the three of them, was lagging behind a bit. Jaina removed her mask and the hood of her cloak in order to wipe sweat from her brow. At the same time, she let her gaze drift over the landscape in front of them and her mouth fell open. A red-and-brown wasteland extended as far as she could see, dark, wind-shaped rock and steep walls, canyons carved into the stone by time and nature. Tatoo I and II stood high: it was a sight to behold. Despite the heat and the glaring sun Jaina stood, transfixed.

_So these are the Jundland Wastes._

At the sight of the rock formation in front of them Jag paused, as well. Silently, they observed the area before them. From the corner of her eyes, Jaina watched him: she was starting to hate the helmet. She couldn't see his eyes, couldn't see his expression. The thin string of emotions she had first felt the night before, though, tightened, and then the bounty hunter turned his head. Their eyes met, for seconds, and held. Jag was the first to look away again. Jaina returned her attention to the landscape in front of them. The Wastes were notorious for the danger that lurked in the depths of its shadowy canyons, for Tusken Raiders, predators and for the simple fact that one could get lost in the twisting corridors. It was one thing to know they had to be crossed – and the other thing standing in their sight and sensing them. Ancient, not alive, but still silently waiting. Threatening. _Walk away. _Suppressing a shiver, Jaina tried to memorize as much as possible of the landscape she could see stretching out before her eyes endlessly.

Something moved at the edge of her field of vision.

"What's that?" Extending her hand, she pointed at a spec of something out in the rocky landscape. "It's moving."

Jag tilted his head, focusing through his helmet. "Looks like a caravan."

"Caravans are not uncommon in the Wastes." Valia didn't bother following Jaina's example, who had dug out her binoculars and was now watching a procession of bantha and their riders slowly threading through a narrow-looking canyon. Where shadow fell they seemed to disappear, but the following animals and human beings were proof that someone had walked there before them.

"It looks like they're vendors," Jag offered whose helmet, of course, was giving him a close view on the procession. "Their animals are heavily loaded. Ah. They have a security detail."

"They'd better have one," Valia agreed. "There have…" She trailed off, her eyes scanning the endless landscape in front of them.

"Of course what?"

Jaina had always loathed having to drag information from people. Maybe an artefact of her youth, when nobody had told them anything in order to _protect_ them from harsh reality. At Valia's fragmental information, she bristled.

Valia smiled with good humor, but a touch of worry was threaded through her expression. "There have been reports on sand pirates roaming this part of the Dune Sea. We have to be careful."

Jag snorted. It was exactly what Jaina was thinking, and she couldn't help herself: she smiled. "Well, wouldn't that be just splendid."

Valia tut-tutted. "You crazy Jedi. Little wonder you almost went extinct the last time."

"Thank you."

"Not a compliment."

They began the descent, following Valia downward and towards the shadows of the great rock formation. The air between the canyon walls was stuffy and hot. The gradual transition between sand and rock that had taken place for the past few hours suddenly was cut short when Jaina set foot onto the bottom of the canyon and felt solid ground. Curious, she crouched down and sifted some of the fine dust through her fingers. It stuck to the leather of her gloves immediately, thin, glittering rust-brown dust that had a strange, iron-like scent that reminded her of something she couldn't quite place. Shaking her head, she stood and instinctively attempted to fall into her usual rear-guard position when Jag's arm shot out and caught hers. Mandalorian crush gaunts clamped around her wrist like steel cuffs.

"Wait. You go – I'll take the rear."

Annoyed, Jaina opened her mouth to tell him that _she_ was the Jedi, and that it would be _her_ danger sense that would warn her should there be an attack from behind.

_Leave him. _

Jaina frowned. Was she hearing voices? It couldn't be. Valia's Force presence was too diffuse, too inconsistent, to connect with Jaina through a Force bond, and Jag… Well, despite the strange thread that seemed to have developed between them she doubted that he would be able to send her a message, even if he wasn't Force-blind. Maybe she was imagining the whole thing. Maybe she was sweaty, itchy, full of sand and wishing she could just go home, take a shower and see her family. Maybe you're on a mission, she reminded herself, smiling wryly. Maybe there is something that needs to be done, and you're the one who has to do it. Because if you don't, who else will?

_Your sarcasm will kill you one day, Jaina. –Not if those horrible jokes of yours get to me first._

Taking a deep breath, she nodded curtly and looked at her wrist pointedly. Jag let go of her. Without looking back another time, Jaina followed Valia into the shadows of the canyons.

It became noticeably cooler the further they ventured into the labyrinthine rock canyons. The red dust covered every surface. There was no vegetation visible, although Jaina suspected certain kinds of moss or even dry bushes to be hidden behind particularly great rock formations. The sound of their silent footsteps echoed through the canyon eerily. She didn't like it – not one bit. The fact that Valia's shoulders were taut with concentration only served to cement her suspicions. The runner led them through the corridors with dreamlike security. Jaina admitted it a few hours later, albeit only to herself: alone, she would have gotten lost almost immediately. It was like she could feel the destination beyond the walls of the canyons – a dark, heavy spec of _something_ that made her distinctly ill if she focused on it too long, probably due to Alema Rar's presence – but she could not find a way out of the labyrinth. It seemed the opposite with their guide: Valia seemed to instinctively know which path they had to travel.

"How does she do it?"

"She probably wouldn't tell you even if you asked."

Only when Jag's voice reached her ears, calm and quietly, Jaina realized she had voiced her question out loud. The fact that he had heard her meant he had to be following her closely. And really, when she turned, there he was.

"And I can't read her," Jaina murmured, offended.

"How strange that you would complain about something like that." Emotions resounded in his voice and for a second Jaina thought he was looking for a reason to start a fight with her. Then, it came to her: faint amusement, even a bit of something that tasted much like regret and self-loathing. But no bitterness. No aggression. "Ground Control to Solo: that's the way most beings feel their entire lives."

"Probably," Jaina said, unsure how to react. Torn between the instinct to banter and the knowledge that it was a bad idea, and that there was nothing she wanted less in the universe than getting close to even _joking_ around with Jagged Fel.

"I can hear you, you know," Valia said conversationally, looking over her shoulder. "If you would be so kind as to get moving again? We don't want to stay here longer than necessary, really."

* * *

><p>With every passing hour they spent edging themselves deeper into the labyrinth that was the Jundland Wastes, the suns sank. Soon, the canyons were growing increasingly darker, the sun light not reaching the ground anymore. Dark shadows seemed to dance behind every stone and behind every corner. Jaina's danger sense still was silent, but there was something disconcerting in the almost malicious silence which lingered in the canyons. She straightened herself and checked their surroundings. Rocks, dead shrubbery, more dust– Jag, standing close to her but not too close; his hand on his blaster. Still… <em>Something's wrong. <em>Her instincts were crying out.

A shadow swooped over them, a vulture in flight. She shivered and continued on.

When their guide stopped abruptly Jaina would have ran smack into her. As it was, she froze, too, the sudden horror of _knowledge_ sweeping over her like an avalanche. Terror and desperation surged in the Force like a wildfire, uncontrollable. It mixed with aggression, anger and violence in a way that made her nauseous and that was all too familiar. Jag, behind her and deaf to the silent scream, actually ran into Jaina and, cursing, steadied both of them by grabbing her shoulder.

"What's wrong?"

Somewhere in the distance a thundering blaster shot was fired, followed by the odd sound of stones sliding across rock. Shifting ground. To Jaina, that fact equaled the onset of a battle.

"Someone is under attack," she forced out between her clenched teeth.

"Tusken Raiders," Valia said, her voice cold. "They hide away in caves and behind rock formations in the Wastes and set up ambushes for travelers and caravans. They must have attacked the caravan we saw earlier today."

Jaina's hand was clenched around her light saber so tightly she could feel its edges dig into her skin even through the thin leather of her gloves. "We have to help them."

"They could be anywhere," Jag protested. "We won't be fast enough-"

"They're close," Valia disagreed. A thin sheen of sweat was coating her brow, either in anticipation or in concentration. Was she using her latent Force abilities?

Jaina took a deep breath and prodded at her danger sense. It blazed up, cold and efficient and indifferent.

"They _are_ close," she repeated woodenly and started to run. "I can feel them."

Cursing, Jag followed her, his blaster already in his hand. "Because that's so reassuring."

The path they had been following wound its way through the rock, the walls left and right of them looming up in the slowly-sinking sun. Jaina almost crashed into an intersection and, without needing to orient herself, chose the right fork. She did not pay any attention to how she knew which way she had to choose, and Jag did not question her. Another sharp right-turn, and a left, and a long, narrow passage in which they had to slow down. Jag cursed when he had to turn, his shoulders in his beskar'gam too wide to pass. Jaina felt him behind her rather than she saw him, focused completely on the fear and terror, violence and battle-madness that were echoing in the Force. He was a steady presence in the back of her mind and she was glad for it.

_Why are you doing this?_

They rounded a bend in the path and there it was.

It was not even a clearing, rather a somewhat oval-shaped thickening in an otherwise no different corridor of the Wastes. A caravan had been trapped there, the bantha in the lead trashing on the ground like crazy, half-buried by a small avalanche of stones. A few desperate riders were trying to calm it in order to save it and its load. It seemed there were less attackers than defenders, but through the din of blaster bolts, screaming and the roaring of the terrified banthas, it was hard to say.

_Child of Light. So selfless, so easily killed. _

Jaina and Jag exchanged one grim glance.

"Cover me?"

She nodded. Jag had his blaster out and ready. Jaina drew her light saber and made a step that carried her in front of him, and then they were in the middle of a fight.

The Tusken Raiders didn't see her until she was among them, her violet blade weaving a net of lethal energy. She sliced through the first attacker without slowing down, seeing him fall in the corner of her eyes and, at the same time, feeling the tunnel view of her battle mode take over. Behind her, Jag dropped behind a protruding rock and took aim. _(She can feel him, calm and focused, unafraid, completely concentrated on picking out the enemies-)_ A shot rang and a Tusken Raider in front of her collapsed. As usual, Jag's aim was unerring. With a Force-enhanced jump – and trying not to get in the way of his line of fire – Jaina passed by one of the caravan members and slashed down on the arm of his attacker. A pained scream and a Raider stumbled back, clutching a smoking wound. She turned again and engaged a Tusken wielding a pole-like weapon, he drew back the spiked end and tried to bludgeon its axe-shaped head into her legs. Blocking it with her saber and cutting straight through the shaft, Jaina grabbed the heavy mace ending that spun away with the Force and re-directed it. The Tusken Raider went down, felled by his own weapon. _(Distinctly she feels Jag re-loading his blaster, the next shot takes out another Tusken Raider, good thing the pirates fight don't have many functioning blasters but_–_)_ a subtle warning in the Force and Jaina whirled around and caught a blaster charge that had been directed at Jag. Caught by surprise, she sent it back almost without aiming and immediately regretted it: it buried itself in the rock wall and set lose another small avalanche, a Tusken and a trader that had been engaged in a fight both jumped back with a shout. It gave Jag the chance, though, to take out the pirate quick and clean. _(Jaina-) _Another one of the Sand people tried to ambush her from behind, Jaina's danger sense sparked and she whirled around to meet him. Once again, the mace-shaped ending of the double-headed pole was sheared off by her blade. Skillfully, the Raider reversed his grip on his weapon, using the now-shortened weapon as a spear. Jaina grabbed the weapon with the Force and the Tusken Raider screamed in a guttural sound of anger and fear as his own weapon speared him with the broken end. He dropped to his knees, bleeding from a gut wound, blood was trickling from underneath his metal face mask. That was when all of the remaining Tusken Raiders, as if compelled by an invisible order, changed direction and advanced on her.

_(Damnit, watch out-)_

It was almost too easy: the Sand people were not prepared to fight a Jedi and a bounty hunter. Jaina probably could have taken them on by herself. Jag's blaster shots still ringing in her ears, mixing with the screams of some of the animals and the ugly sounds of flesh meeting her light saber, she came to stop in the middle of the battle field, adrenaline still cursing through her. Almost ten Tusken Raiders were either dead or heavily wounded, the rest of them advancing on her. One bantha was on its side, its tail trashing, while surprised and terrified men were taking cover behind another. _(Cannot risk this-) _Jag appeared from seemingly nowhere, landing squarely behind her. Jaina imagined she could still feel the heat of his small maneuvering thrusters of his beskar'gam.

_(Got your back-)_

Jaina used the Force to tug another opponent towards her, upsetting his balance, her blade went right through his neck. The next one tried to jump her, Jag sheared off his arm with one of the short, sharp blades he had drawn from the sheath on his back. A screaming Raider stumbled away from them and into the spear of one of his comrade as she twisted out of the way. There was barely time to register the surprise on the face of the Raider before Jaina killed him, too. Jag made no sound, his blade slicing through the throat of a pirate, his other hand blocking a gaffi stick. A Force-push and the Raider who had tried to attack him back slammed into the wall with brutal force, he coughed up blood and did not get up again. Another of his comrades made the mistake to rush Jaina directly, perhaps in retaliation, Jag lashed out and he went down. The two last sand pirates were more cautious, trying to get her by attacking at random intervals from two different directions, and Jaina gathered herself and jumped, and both speared each other. She landed, feather-soft, and finished them off with a blow to their heads with the hilt of her blade: mercy, maybe, or additional cruelty.

Suddenly, with the ground slick with black blood and littered with corpses and pieces of gaffi sticks, the canyon seemed dark and much too silent. A heart beat passed, ten, fifty. Nobody seemed to move. Back to back, Jaina and Jag stood, wearily, and surveyed their surroundings.

No Tusken Raider got up. A man straightened, instead, from where he had taken cover when the Jedi and the bounty hunter had intervened. He wore the cloak and turban that was typical for nomads on Tatooine, though now covered in red dust and blood. His hand clutched a long, sharp scimitar. He looked – well, Jaina couldn't get a feel regarding his age. He was dangerous, alright, but then a man who led a caravan through a desert had to possess a certain degree of lethality. Still, Jaina refused to let herself relax out of the battle mode. One by one, more men stood, some of them injured. They formed a circle around them and the man who obviously was their leader, until they were facing a circle of desert-hardened nomads.

_(You're not alone in this.)_

She felt him, behind her, warm and familiar and reassuring. His blaster was now trained on the men. It was strange, standing shoulder to shoulder with him again. Since the Yuuzhan Vong War they had been on different sides, had been so perhaps even during it without noticing it themselves. But right here, right now, the sides were clear. It was them against the others. Jaina almost laughed and lifted her light saber.

And then Valia appeared from the shadows of the canyon as if conjured up from red dust and rock.

"My name is Valyrianamia Stormchaser. Greetings, men of the desert. I hope you have not suffered losses too great by the hands of the Sand People."

The sight of the petite desert runner seemed to calm the men almost instantly. Their leader stepped forward, lowering his weapon.

"Greetings, Stormchaser. Your fame precedes you. You and your comrades helped us fight off the Tusken Raiders. I, Salim A'hayun, and my men are in your debt."

He pressed his fist to his heart and gave a curt bow.

Valia returned the gesture. "We are glad to help, Salim A'hayun, but you cannot stay here for long. The Raiders will be back with their neighboring clans to avenge their fallen."

The tall, broad-shouldered man nodded and turned to another man to whom he barked a few short sentences in the heavy, thick accent of the Dune Sea nomads. His last word was accentuated by a sharp order, at which most of the men – and women, now that Jaina had the time she could see that some of the long robes and hooded cloaks hid distinctly female features – scrambled off in every direction in order to get the caravan moving again.

The shadows between the rock walls of the Jundland canyons had grown longer and longer. Everywhere she looked, the nomads were trying to salvage whatever had not been destroyed by the attack or had been crushed by the avalanche and the fallen banthas. One of the animals was dead, one was wounded badly and was shot by its rider. Tears were streaming down the man's face as he put his animal out of its misery. One of the women seemed responsible for dressing the wounds and taking care of the wounded. Valia joined her. Together, they worked quickly, conversing silently in the thick desert dialect Jaina couldn't understand. Instead, she focused on another woman who was tasked with the redistribution of the cargo. Jag and the men, in the meantime, collected the Tusken Raider's weapons and carried the bodies towards a low stone plateau.

"It's custom for our people to honor our enemies, as well," the woman explained in halting, heavily accented basic. "Bodies are not buried here. We come from the desert, and we return to it."

Since night was approaching, Jaina could not see the sky. But she knew they would be there as soon as the humans had moved on. _Vultures, and probably many other kinds of animals. _She shivered.

"Night is near," the woman said, having noticed her involuntary reaction. "We have to move on quickly." Her eyes wandered over the caravan, the tired, injured men and the exhausted animals. "Moon Trinity, I do not know whether we will make it." Her voice was matter-of-fact, detached, even.

"We'll accompany you," Jaina heard herself saying. On the other side of the camp, clear out of earshot, Valia lifted her head and looked at her directly. "It's maybe six hours of brisk walk. We can make it out of the Wastes until Midnight."

The woman looked at her quietly and finally nodded. "I will tell my father that you offered your guidance. In the name of the Tribe, I thank you and your companions, Jedi."

She moved away, gracefully, and Jaina caught herself wondering how old she was. Not older than herself, if she had to guess. Still, she had carried herself with a silent grace that reminded Jaina of her mother. The envy, though, was… quiet. Rather the memory of an old pain that actual hurt.

"Doubling back now will cost us at least a day," Jag said right next to her and Jaina fought both the urge to whip her head around to look at him and for her hand to press against her chest. The bounty hunter was looking at her with a very familiar frown, but she couldn't see whether he was disapproving or merely stating a fact.

"I know," she said, calm despite her furiously beating heart. They would give Alema Rar one more day to reach the Valley of Spirits, and to do whatever the Sith had come to Tatooine to do. They had a mission. And yet… "But we can't just leave them here. The Tusken Raiders will return, to extract their revenge."

_Sword. Protector._

"I didn't say we should leave them be." In the darkness, his eyes were dark, unreadable pools in his face. "I think we should accompany them, too."

There was no accusation in his tone and yet Jaina felt... hurt. As if he hadn't expected her to make this decision. As if Jag hadn't believed she would do the right thing. It was irrational, and she quickly buried the thought again.

When the caravan leader finished checking on the banthas, his men and the cargo, he came over to where Valia, Jaina and Jag were sitting around Valia's storm flare.

He nodded to Valia respectfully. "My daughter told me of your offer to accompany us to the edge of the wastelands. We are deeply grateful for your help."

"Is everything ready?" Valia stood and shook dust from her cloak. Jaina and Jag followed suit.

"Yes." Salim made a few steps back and signaled his people. Sudden movement created noise: all over the small canyon, Jaina could hear nomads ascend their banthas, tighten the last strings around the cargo and move to their place in the caravan. The ease of their departure spoke of years of training. It was impressive.

"Well." Jag's voice sounded hollow as he put on his helmet. She couldn't see his expression. His voice, however, was as dry as the desert surrounding them. "That was quite enough action for one day."

Despite the relative size of the caravan, including both the human travelers and the pack animals, the pace Salim set was fairly quick. However, the banthas were tired and unwilling to continue on with their trek. The masked and cloaked desert nomads urged the huge animals onwards with soft calls and touches. They complied, shaking their large heads that were topped by spiraling horns. The rest of the travelers adapted a similar pace. One by one, the caravan was set into motion and disappeared into the dark tunnel that was the pathway between the rock walls. Valia went with Salim, not before exchanging a long glance with both Jag and Jaina.

"I'll cover the back," Jaina said quietly. He hesitated for a heartbeat, his eyes behind his visor searcing for hers, and then nodded curtly and fell in line in the middle of the caravan. Jaina cast one last look after him and slipped off, towards the end of the procession.

* * *

><p>The caravan moved slowly, by Jaina's standards. While the banthas covered quite a distance with each step they moved their hooves in a slow, almost hypnotic rhythm. Huge as they were, they had little to fear from the typical desert predators. Of course, her suddenly tired brain supplied helpfully, there were always larger fish. They could just hope that they would make it out of the Wastes before the Tusken Raiders found the place of the battle – and their dead.<p>

Darkness had now fallen entirely. Jaina could barely see the person in front of her.

Following the caravan was different than trekking by themselves. Moving slowly, especially after the adrenaline-spiking run and fight they had been involved in earlier, felt much more exhausting than the fight itself had seemed to be. The dark canyon walls were threatening to collapse on her and Jaina had to forcefully remind herself of the fact that the walls didn't move, and that danger wasn't in the way the canyon boxed her in but in the danger hidden away in the shadows. Hour after hour they travelled. At some points, Valia had to lead them on detours since the heavy-set banthas were unable to slip through some of the thin pathways the three of them had come through. After a seemingly never-ending trek the steepness of the desert ground increased and Jaina's heart beat accelerated. She focused once again, calming herself deliberately, listening for followers; a warning from her danger sense. Nothing came. There was a silver shadow on the horizon, one that grew and grew until, finally, she stepped out of the shadow of the rock formation and into the soft light of Tatooine's tree moons.

The dune they had climbed that morning hadn't looked that steep before, Jaina thought, exhausted. It was the last stage of their nightly trek. Once over its crest, they would be safe – at least as safe as a caravan in the Dune Sea was at night. Sighting, she braced herself for the last part of the journey.

Though in the darkness, the path seemed familiar. They almost had made it. Soon, the first banthas would have reached the crest of the dune range surrounding the Wastes, and then it was only a matter of time… But time stretched. On the slippery sand which she couldn't see very well anymore, her tired feet dragged and slipped. She caught herself from falling, a curse on her lips. A soft call from the front. The person in front of her replied softly. Jaina focused on the huffs of breath the bantha in front of her occasionally gave. Ten heartbeats. Twenty. _Huff._ Onward, upward, in the light of the two moons. _Huff. _Twenty heartbeats. _Focus._ Everything was silver-shadow and dark.

Another half hour. Steep dunes, shifting sands. Heartbeats. Jaina could imagine the top of the dunes behind which the second-to-last pack animal just disappeared…

The crest came into sight. She breathed a sigh of relief-

And then the bantha next to her reared up on its hind legs, thousand kilograms of heavy, exhausted and terrified animal. Its rider gave a high-pitched cry and clung to it. Jaina's danger sense reared up like a wounded snake, adrenaline erasing her exhaustion instantaneously. She could sense the animal in front of her, terrified by something. The people in the caravan, tired and instantly alert. Jag in the front, cool and collected, and the feral, _hungry_ creature behind her. The bantha sped forwards in a spray of sand.

It was impossible to dodge the avalanche that suddenly came rolling towards Jaina. The world was lost in a whirl of black and white. The last thing she heard was the hammering of her heart, and the sharp cry of triumph of a krayt dragon as her quarry came straight at her.


	7. Force bonds

**Force bonds**

Instinct was a strange thing.

Jaina couldn't breathe. Sand was everywhere – in her eyes, between her hands, all around her – and tore her down relentlessly. First she slid, then it dragged her under. Buried her knee-deep, waist-deep and further, tore at her clothes and her hair and her pack and her limbs. Her sense of orientation was lost in the downslide. She fell, tumbled and slid, unable to stop. Her eyes were stinging. The rush of her own blood in her ears was deafening but still did not drown out the angry, roaring krayt dragon that was sensing his prey was near. _Served on a platter._ –_Irony will be your downfall, sister mine._ All her instincts screamed at her to try and break her fall with her hands, to flail her arms and scream until someone – anyone – helped her. But – and that was the strange thing and, at the same time, not strange at all – there were other instincts engrained into her being so deeply they took over without a second thought. Jaina reached out for the Force and _drew_. It came immediately. It enveloped her like a soft, warm shell, creating a thin layer of air between herself and the surrounding sand. It wouldn't save her, she knew, but at least it protected her for a short sliver of time. At the same time, she grasped for her light saber. Layers of clothing suddenly seemed to deliberately try to hinder her. In combination with the sand, it was a task which seemed to take hours but Jaina was aware that only seconds had passed since she had been caught by the avalanche. After an eternity the familiar, cool metal of her light saber hilt nestled into her hand and she gripped it tightly, not activating it yet. She was still sliding, downward, buried by sand, but _down_ was the only conscious direction she was able to discern. If she didn't do something, she would be buried too deeply to free herself on her own accord. If she didn't free herself fast enough, her air would run out, and if she slid too deep she would be crushed by the masses of sand. And there was no time to think, no time to consciously decide for a strategy. No time to worry about whether she would be found, or how she would have to try to free herself. No time, no hesitation. _I know you can do it._ Jaina's Force awareness latched on the closest living Force presence she could sense: a bright and blood-red consciousness. It was a wild, feral instinct: the krayt dragon. Dark and strong, driven by a fierce animal instinct that called for blood. It wanted to kill. It wanted to protect. It did not know good or evil, just the fight that was survival for itself and its brood. It was frightening.

But it was beautiful, too.

For a second, Jaina saw what Jacen had seen in the animals he had loved so much when he was a child. For a heartbeat, she could see what he had seen, and feel what he had felt. _Jacen. _She could see him: his blond locks were tousled, as always, his brown eyes shining. A smile lit up his face: carefree and mischievous, like he was plotting a prank or wondering which one of his horrible jokes he should tell her, again. It was Jacen the way he had been before the war had reeled them in and changed them. Jaina could see the twin brother she had loved, who had been her second half for all her life until they weren't One anymore. A memory sparked.

_"Jaina, Jaina, how many stormtroopers do you need to assemble a TIE fighter? Two: one to hold the parts, one to glue them on!"_

_"God, Jacen, that has to be the lamest joke you ever made! Where did you get it from this time?"_

_"Wait, I'm not finished. How do you double the value of a TIE fighter? Easy: you refuel completely!"_

_"I swear, if I hear one of your lame TIE jokes one more time I'll throw myself off the top of the pyramid."_

_"Aww. I thought you loved those."_

_"How did you recon that?"_

_"Because you're my twin, and I love you, so you're kind of required to love me. That's how it works."_

_"Don't get your hopes up. I'm just putting up with you because sometimes it's handy having you around."_

_A laugh, silver and clear. _

_"Love you too, sis."_

The jungle of Yavin Four. The hangar bay of the Jedi Academy, with its scent of engine grease, burnt power cells, coolant liquids and anti-corrosion chemicals. The familiar scent of the Falcon, a home as much as the apartment on Coruscant, and her mother's soft perfume, her father's aftershave. Chewie's wet fur after a walk in the rain on Kashykk. And, everywhere, always with her: Jacen. Her twin. Jaina's brother. A bright light in the Force, a warm bond between them since the first moment they gained consciousness. She had never been alone in her entire life, not for a second, before Vegere had consciously interrupted their Force bond… Jacen's eyes caught hers and he smiled, bright and loving, and stretched out a hand to welcome her. And then his face twisted into a scowl and his eyes turned black and his Force presence withered and died. It was replaced by a dark, frighteningly unfamiliar presence that burned coldly and made her shiver.

_"I can read your mind, sister mine. You wonder when this happened. Fact is: it did not _happen_ at all. It was always _there. _It is always present, within each one of us, every single being. It always was within me, and it was within you. There is no such thing as hope, or kindness. There merely is the Dark Side, and the power it gives. And you cannot save me from it, because I do not require saving."_

_Instead, he attacked._

Their parents. Ben. Aunt Mara. Allana. She tried to move, to save the people she loved most, but she was frozen. Her body was not her own. Useless hands, useless legs, and the only thing she could do was to scream –

And something inside Jaina broke. Broke again, because she had known it as the truth a long time ago but had refused to accept it. She had tried to save him but he had been beyond saving: Jacen Solo had died a long time ago. The boy who had been her twin, the one who had lived and laughed by her side, was dead. Tenel Ka had screamed in agony when they felt him disappear. Her parents had turned towards each other, shutting out the world, and had then been forced to fight assassins of whom they knew their son had sent after them. Uncle Luke and Aunt Mara had had to deal with the fact that Jacen had tried to torture Ben, had tried to turn his little cousin, and then Mara had fought him and had almost been killed. Darth Caedus had abducted his daughter and had almost killed his uncle, and then Jaina had come after him. In order to do so she had needed to cut a part of her heart away, because Jacen had been her twin and her beloved brother. She had needed to break their connection once more, and it had nearly killed her. But she had managed to do so. She had set aside hate and anger and had fought him as the Sword of the Jedi, and she had managed to get the better of him. She had lifted her blade for the killing blow, ready to fulfil her last, her most important quest, ready to kill a piece of herself – and then, for a heartbeat, she had hesitated. It was his face, the fear-filled grimace, panic screaming from every pore of his body, that made her waver. _Save Allana! _Had it been love, the sole essence of the Light Side, that had spoken through Jacen one last time? Had it been hidden deep, deep down in his heart and had revealed itself the second before her blade slashed down to kill him? Had it been enough? Had it been enough to redeem him, in the end, this one last second of thought that did not concern himself or the Dark Side, but the wellbeing of his own flesh and blood? Would it be enough?

_Don't let them do this to me, Jaina! Don't let them send me there – not there – Jaina, you're my sister, we _share_ this, you have to help me-_

But it didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered. Their bond had been broken, and so many other things. And Jaina didn't feel broken anymore, only tired. The sand surrounding her was warm and comfortable, touched her face like a mother's hand would touch her child's brow. _Sleep, Jedi. There's nothing left to do for you. Rest._ It would be so easy to just close her eyes and give in. But she did not _want_ to give in. It was wrong, went against everything she had learned and had lived for. Her parents, her uncle, even her aunt: they never had given up, not even when they had lost everything they held dear, when everything they believed in turned out to be a lie. She was a Jedi, she was the Sword. So many people depended on her, so many she protected by her sole presence. She had a task to fulfil, couldn't give up now… It was just. It was just so hard to go on. To continue fighting, continue breathing and fighting for breath. Fighting was hard, living even harder. No peace, no place to settle down. Friends, yes, and family, but always being on her own. Being alone in a room full of people _hurt_ more than she ever would have expected. Running, running, her entire life, and there was no way she would be able to stop sometime soon. It was warm here, and quiet. She could just stay there. She would just stay, on this planet with its twin suns and three moons and desert winds and cruel and beautiful creatures, and nobody would miss her…

_Yes. Just stay here, rest, you know you have earned it…_

Her limbs were heavy, her eyes closed, and Jaina could feel her thoughts slipping away. It felt peaceful. It felt-

_JAINA!_

Someone shouted her name. The voice resounded in her head, shocked her out of the stupor caused by oxygen deficiency. Jaina drew on the Force more strongly, gathered her strength…

And catapulted herself forward.

_Impact._

It was as if her mind had run straight into a brick wall. The mental equivalent of pain shot through her – a teeth-jarring impact that shook her to the bone. Clinging to her light saber, Jaina stumbled to her feet, dragging her legs out of the sand that was settling down all around her. Blinking in the harsh moon light, she reacted to her peaking danger sense and jumped, with the aid of the Force, almost two meters into the air. A long, muscled and spiked tail slammed into the ground just where she had come up a heartbeat ago and sprayed sand in every direction. Jaina threw herself backwards and into a salto, landed on her feet, spun around and slashed out with her now-activated light saber. The krayt dragon snarled viciously as the tip grazed its scaled. The nauseating scent of scarred keratin filled the air and mingled with the roars of panicked bantha and furious predator. Her exhaustion completely forgotten, Jaina launched herself at the animal. The trashing and tossing spindly wings, the razor-sharp teeth and the spike-tipped tail whirled madly and she ducked and dodged, without any coherent thought, leaving all her movements to instincts and training and the Force. The dragon roared, adding blinking talons to the lethal mix. Jaina dropped to the ground and dodged the jaws which, a second before, would have closed around her left arm. However, she could not avoid the follow-up of claws raking along her upper left arm. Cursing, she twisted to the side, gathered her momentum and launched herself at the dragon, slashing her light saber across its chest. The dragon reared up on its hind legs, a dark shadow against an even darker sky, and screeched wildly. Jaina changed gears instantly. She did not want to kill the predator. It was protecting its clutch, it was hungry and determined. But if it was kill or be killed, it meant she would have to fight. The krayt dragon was poised above her, ready to strike: tons of heavy bones and flesh, razor-sharp teeth and talons, spiked tail. Jaina emerged herself into the Force even deeper, unaware of her surroundings except for the angry opponent – and then a whisper at the edge of her consciousness made her dive to the side without delivering the killing blow. Instead, a red blaster bolt shot past her, so close she could almost sense the crackling heat of energy. It hit the dragon square in the jaw. The huge animal roared back one last time, its tail trashing furiously, and then collapsed with a thunderous sound.

The silence that followed was deafening.

Jaina stood, her light saber still activated and her breathing labored, and wearily regarded the animal. Its chest kept rising and falling in rapid succession: it was stunned and unconscious, but not dead. On the un-armored skin of its throat, charred scales indicated at the place where the stun bolt had hit. Distantly, she recognized the skill necessary to hit such a small spot on a moving target. In darkness, no less. Not talking of the fact that the bolt could have hit _her_… Jaina deactivated her light saber and turned away from the dragon and towards the men running towards her.

The first to reach her was the rider of the bantha directly in front of her. His words, though, where completely blurred. Maybe it was shock, maybe just exhaustion, but Jaina did not catch a word of what he was saying. When he grabbed her arm, she shook him off. It caused him to increase his chatter as he tugged at her even more insistently. Jaina snarled at him and he shrank backwards, wide-eyed and frightened. A mean kind of satisfaction ran through her, momentarily, and was immediately replaced with exhaustion.

"Solo."

Jag reached her, his blaster still in his hand. Of course. He probably had some kind of night vision mode integrated into his helmet. Since his face was hidden, she only saw herself in the reflection of his visor.

"Is it out?"

"Out cold."

He shook his head. "Damn."

"You could have _kriffin' _killed me." She was too tired to even raise her voice, but her message got across.

Jag regarded her, calmly. "It was a stun round. And you dodged it."

"Well, that definitely makes me feel better."

The pain in her left arm suddenly became reality, sharp and pronounced. Tiredly, Jaina shook her head. "Well, whatever. Thanks, I guess."

A sharp call from the other end of the caravan reminded the onlookers that the night was not young anymore, and that they had to put a distance between the Wastes and themselves. One after the other, the people trickled away, climbing the dune once more. The moon hung low. Jaina stood, the cold of the desert night suddenly blowing right through her. Her shoulder ached. She smiled grimly, more to herself than to anyone else, and prepared to set off again.

"The journey is the reward, right?"

"Wait." Jag's hand closed around her arm. "Are you alright?"

Pain flashed through her, sharply, and she couldn't help it: she flinched. Jag froze, his hand still outstretched to where she had torn her arm out of his grasp. Hurt flashed in his eyes, intensely, and disappeared again as his features took on his usual, impenetrable mask. Jaina couldn't see it, since he was still wearing his helmet. But she _knew_. There was no way denying it, not anymore. It had been the tiniest whisper of a voice, in the beginning, a thin thread of emotions picked up by her. She could have ignored it then, could have forgotten about it. But then this strange kind of mind-meld during the fight with the Tusken Raiders, and now, again: even in her completely exhausted state Jaina could feel him. And it wasn't a good feeling, not at all. Jag was Force-blind, how was it that she could sense him like that? How was it she sometimes knew exactly what he thought, what he wanted to say? It wasn't normal, and it certainly wasn't right. And it scared her to hell.

Before further explanations could take root in her mind, Jaina pushed every thought on Jagged Fel and her sudden attunement to him from her mind and, at the same time, prayed she wouldn't ever have to deal with it. Maybe it would just go away. Right now, she had other things to take care of. Because she was so tired, and because she didn't want him to believe she had moved away because he had touched her, she told him the truth.

"No. Sorry. It got my arm. Just a flesh wound, I can manage."

Wordlessly, Jag took her other arm and led her away from the body of the unconscious krayt dragon. He tugged down her cloak carefully and took in the damage. Jaina turned her head: in the light of the moon, she could only make out two deep gouges in her skin. The blood was only slowly starting to clot, sticking the material of her clothes to her skin. She held her breath when Jag eased it away with a gentleness that did not fit the fierce, aloof behavior he mostly displayed. It was one of the things she had loved in him: the way he could be gentle, unbelievably kind, with things he regarded as precious. A slight pang of regret – of _something_ – rose in her chest. She was exhausted, she supposed, and weary of being suspicious and distant. Jag bandaged her upper left arm and watched as Jaina tugged down her shirt again and wrapped herself into her cloak. Her arm burned like it was on fire.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Wordlessly, they climbed the dune, side by side. If Jag watched out for her especially, he did not give it away. Far, far to the east, the first glow of morning began to color the horizon.

* * *

><p>Valia, Jag and she accompanied the caravan for another three hours. When they were safely out of the Jundland Wastes, they took their leave. As a thanks, Salim A'hayun not only gave them a good amount of provisions and water but, as Valia summarized, also recognized the debt he was in towards the Jedi, the bounty hunter and the desert runner.<p>

"And it's always nice to have someone indebted to you, especially when he is in such a practical position."

Jaina had drawn on the Force since they had left the Wastes in order to keep alert and steady. Valia had seemed to gather her energy, as usual, straight from their surroundings, while Jag probably ran on pure arrogance. _No, _she corrected herself absentmindedly. _On determination._ Finally, at noon, Valia sighed.

"Let's camp."

Jaina helped to set up the small, make-shift tents and waited until Jag gave an all clear, and then she collapsed onto her thin bed roll. Her arm still pounded, but she pushed the pain aside. She just needed to rest. Sleep came noiselessly, pulling her under and, mercifully, not sending her any nightmares.


	8. living things in desert places

**living things in desert places**

"So," Valia said cheerfully as the sun sank over the Jundland Wastes, "good things take their fair time. We'll enter the wastelands again tomorrow, and in two days we'll reach the Valley of the Spirits."

It was evening again. Jaina had slept for a great part of the day, and so had her companions. When she had woken in the late afternoon she had realized she had not been awakened for her watch. She apologized but was waved off by Valia.

"You needed to rest. You did contribute a bit more to yesterday's events than we did."

During the day, the runner seemed to have applied her time to set some snares. They had desert rabbit for dinner, roasted over a small fire and seasoned well with the help of a small sack of herbs and salt the old woman produced from her bag. It tasted good: a million times better than nutri bars and freeze-dried vegetables. Jag had – probably reluctantly – discarded his helmet during the day. They had spent the last afternoon hours under the sparse shade of their tent, cleaning their weapons and mostly not doing anything. Valia used a wicked-looking dagger to carve something out of a piece of desert wood. While the sun sank, it took on the startlingly accurate forms of a female krayt dragon, complete with horns.

"You're planning on taking the shortest route through the Wastes, or the safest one?" Jag asked. Interested, Jaina lifted her head. It had not even occurred to her that Valia could deliberately have chosen a longer but more secure path.

Valia shrugged. "You saw what happened to the caravan."

"You saw I could handle it." Jaina crossed her arms in front of her chest and received a glare from Jag that had no need to be formed into words. "Fine – _we_ handled it," she conceded. "Fact is, we don't have much time. We lost almost two days."

"Well, that's that. We could take a shortcut. It's not safe, not by any reasonable standards." The old woman seemed to weight her options. "It's not only unsafe in regards to Tusken Raider ambushes. The Wastes are dangerous in themselves."

"But you know them." Looking at the desert runner, Jaina tried to gauge the sense she got off her in the Force. There was a great amount of experience born from years and years of crossing the Dune Sea. Valia had not lived to see her grandchildren grow up by underestimating anything, not herself and not her surroundings, or by taking unnecessary risks. There was fear in her, too, a small flicker, steady and cold. But that was just as well. Jaina had learned the hard way that people who didn't fear anything were missing a vital understanding of what it meant to be human.

"I know them," Valia said, slowly. "We could take a shortcut. We'd be through the Wastes by tomorrow night. But we'll have to start off early tomorrow, and lie low all the time. We'll have to be constantly alert. And you have to do exactly what I say, and the second I say it."

"Seems sensible," Jag nodded. "When it comes to it, don't worry about us. We'll manage."

"I'm more worried about myself," the guide muttered darkly. "Well, we might as well try. I always wanted to check up a few things out there. Oh, and while we're talking about that." Her forehead crinkled in thought. "Have you ever wondered, girl, what your crazy Dark One would want out there?"

"Do I look like I knew what a Dark Jedi would think?"

Jag carefully placed the last power pack into his blaster with an audible _click._ He looked at it thoughtfully before adding: "I've been thinking about that, too."

Jaina shot him an acidic glare. "You don't say."

"No, seriously." Jag looked at her, calmly. He was _actually_ looking at her, not _through_ her. The realization made her heart lurch painfully. "What's she doing there? It's a valley in the middle of a desert. What would she be searching for out there?"

"Some kind of super weapon? A Dark Force artifact?" Jaina suggested. The words echoed through her head eerily.

"Another Sith meditation sphere?"

"Maybe." She frowned. None of those suggestions felt _right,_ but they didn't exactly feel _wrong,_ either. "Or she's just bantha-shit mental these days."

"Granted." Jag's humor was as dry as the desert that surrounded them. "Is she listening to some evil Sith overlord who's talking in her mind?"

Skeptical, Jaina inspected her light saber for the twenty-somethingst time that day. At least there was no sand caught in the crystal compartment of the hilt, not anymore. "I don't know. Are there any Sith Lords left?"

She swallowed at the knowledge that the last one to rise to power had been her brother.

"Hey, you're the Jedi, girl." Valia leaned back. "You tell me." She chuckled drily. "You know, living on a backwater planet like this Lady here is a curious thing. Of course, most of the news just rush past us, since who cares? But the Yuuzhan Vong couldn't be ignored, of course. The Hutts' involvement saw to that. Along comes a war, and a victory and a new government, and everything seemed fine. Except for the thing they called Swarm War, which might not have taken place close to here but still. And then rumors start of how there's a new Lord Vader, and believe it or not, Tatooine still stops to listen when the name is dropped. Next there is some commotion about Mandalorians, wild gossips about the Imperial Remnant, and suddenly the Galactic Alliance is discarded in favor for something entirely new once again. One would be an utter idiot to _not_ wonder about what has happened in the meantime."

"That," Jag said after a long pause, "Was a very interesting summary of the galactic history of the past two decades."

"Wasn't it?" Valia laughed, delighted. "Just imagine my surprise when Jedi Girl here appears _just_ in front of me. When the rumors went round Mos Eisley that a crazy woman was looking for a desert runner, I wouldn't have imagined."

"So what," Jaina snapped, feeling mildly annoyed and very disconcerted, "are you trying to say here?"

The old woman smiled sympathetically. "Did you believe you could set foot on Tatooine without her noticing? Jaina Solo, the moment you appeared here you had no secrets to keep anymore."

"Who are you talking about?"

"Of you, of course." Valia's words were matter-of-fact. "Or your mission, whatever you want it to be about. You've come here to search for someone, and this someone clearly is important to you. I would be stupid to think you'd greet her like a long-lost friend and take her home, of course. But what are you planning to do, actually?"

"Alema Rar," Jaina began and was shocked into silence when Jag's eyes sparked angrily at the same time and he drove his fist into the sand deeply.

"Alema Rar," he said. "She's a Dark Force user. She incited the Swarm War, which led to the disgrace of my family and me being exiled. She forged an alliance with the Sith Lord Lumiya and aided her and Darth Caedus-" A short glance towards Jaina, and she felt the now-familiar wave of guilt and grief, "In order to destabilize the Republic and the Imperial Remnant. She functioned as assassin, was sent to kill Princess Organa Solo and her husband. She aided Darth Caedus in the abduction of Ben Skywalker, during which he was tortured, and thus was an integral part in the events that led to the fight between Darth Caedus and Mara Jade Skywalker. There is no turning back for her now, and neither do we have the privilege of turning away from what is our duty. She has to be brought to justice."

He stopped, breathing faster than usual, and Jaina noticed his hands were curled into fists. Was he angry because of what Alema had done to him, and his family? Or was it that he wanted to apprehend her because her actions had hurt other people, as well?

Valia eyed them carefully, first Jag, then her. "You talk about duty, boy. What do you know about duty?"

"Do not," Jag said, slowly and carefully. "Do not tell me that I do not know the true meaning of the word duty, woman. What do you know about me?" He was white as a sheet, his fisted hands trembling. And Jaina could feel his pain. It came back to this: again and again. Duty. Jagged Fel, firstborn and heir to Soontir Fel, Baron to the Chiss Empire. Jaina Solo, last daughter of Princess Leia Organa Solo, hero of the Rebellion and the New Republic. Commander. Sword. Chiss. Jedi. It was so meaningless, and yet so vital. What were they without their duties? It was Jag's duty to bring justice to his family's name, and Jaina's to protect the ones that couldn't protect themselves. Their duties had made them who they were. _Hunter. Sword._ It was a privilege, and a curse. Not for the first time in her life Jaina wished she would be able to cast everything aside: her duties, her ties. Her past.

Valia's eyes had been searching. Now, her gaze softened. "There is the wisdom of the ancients in your eyes, boy. You are too young for such kinds of regrets. The two of you are."

Jag's pain was her pain. It swirled around them and into her, and it melded in a hurt so great she choked on it.

Jaina grabbed her mask. "I need some air."

Outside, the cold of the night was slowly replacing day's heat. She scrambled away from their campsite as fast as possible, not caring what they were thinking at her sudden exit. The crushing pain abated only slowly, leaving behind a void she could not explain and feared to look at. The night air was brisk and fresh. Carefully, Jaina took one breath after another, just concentrated on the flow streaming in and out of her lungs. Tears pricked at the insides of her eyes and she bit them back, forced them down again until she had the feeling she was choking on them – but she did not cry. Instead, she steadied her breathing, and concentrated.

Bit by bit, her racing heart calmed. The Force swirled around her, alive, not offering comfort but comfortable in the familiarity of its touch. She pushed away the lingering feeling of utter loneliness and walked back towards the camp. Circling back, she thought she heard some wild dogs' cry, but except for the wind and the occasional animal shifting the sand she did not hear or see anything. When she reached the tent, Valia's mutters greeted her. And then words leapt out of the quiet din, sharp and edged.

"So what's about the two of you? Gossip says you have _history._" The desert runner gave the word just the right amount of a tilt that made it imply just about everything. "How long have you known each other?"

Jaina stood, rooted to the spot, and did not dare to move. Her heart beat a tattoo against her ribs. Surprisingly, Jag answered, albeit after a long, long time. "Since before the Yuuzhan Vong invasion."

"So?" Valia prompted.

Jaina wished for a shovel to dig herself a hole to disappear in. Was he really going to-

"We were engaged. It didn't work out."

Valia eyed him critically. "And that was because?" She prompted.

Jaina imagined Jag shrugging, not looking at anyone. Imagined the pain still in his eyes, as deep as it had been the day it had happened. _Felt_ his pain, alive in the vast endlessness of the desert. _You were hurt, too._ She shook off the sense of despair that threatened to drown her, an echo of her own, younger self.

_No. _It wasn't an echo. The pain was as fresh today as it had been years before. _He is leaving me._

"A combination of things, I guess. Family." He did not say: _duty_. But the word hung in the air, unsaid, like a poison flower in its lethal beauty. "I had to go back to Csilla, she couldn't leave her family. We met again, eventually, on opposing sides of the Swarm War. It wasn't pretty."

"Hm." Valia hummed. "There seems to be a lot of pain between the two of you."

Please–

Jag didn't answer. Thankfully, the guide dropped the topic with that last comment. Slowly, slowly, Jaina unfroze, clenching her eyes shut and opening them again. She willed her heart to slow down and her lips to smile, and then she moved back a few paces and covered the distance to the tent another time, taking care to announce her arrival.

"Ah." Valia looked up as she crawled into their makeshift camp. "I'm slowly getting tired. We'll start early tomorrow, cross the Wastes. Probably, we'll reach the Valley of the Spirits at nightfall. What about watch duty?"

"I can start," Jaina offered. "I'm not tired yet, and I've slept more than the two of you. I'll take the last shift, too."

Jag seemed conflicted, but Valia simply nodded. "Wake me when it's my turn."

She burrowed down in her bed roll, and soon her soft snores were heard. Jag didn't move.

Was he, Jaina wondered, also feeling this raw and exposed? He'd just broken down whatever had once existed between the two of them into a few words, had managed to open up all the wounds she had thought had scarred over long ago. _No, _she realized. It hadn't been his words. It had been seeing him again, even after such a long time, that had brought forth many of her own insecurities and worries once again. It seemed that, even after years, Jagged Fel still managed to unsettle her to the point that she would remember all her old feelings for him: the longing, the desperate need and the happiness of being with him. They'd been so young then, and what he had offered Jaina – the way he looked at her, smiled, touched her – the way he made her feel had been so incredibly, incredibly precious. There was a difference, she had learned at that time, a difference between being part of a loving family, of being _beloved_, and of being _loved_ by _someone. _They hadn't fallen in love right away, they had been too different. Polar opposites: the smuggler's daughter with her volatile temper and the icy baron's son. Love had snuck up on her, somehow. One day she had trained with him, admiring his control and strength but thinking him too cool and detached. The next she simply _looked_ at him and it had been a blow to the gut. He was cool and controlled, but also kind, and humorous, and he cared. He was strong, but he didn't believe it himself. He was loyal to the Chiss Ascendancy – but he would question this loyalty when it came to it. And he asked nothing from other people he wasn't willing to do himself. Jaina hadn't been able to help herself: She had run. This was bigger than anything, something she couldn't wrap her head around, couldn't see any way of it being possible. It would only crush her and that was unacceptable: she was needed, she had to fight. She couldn't let herself be distracted like that. And… And Anakin. She couldn't have happiness, not when so many other people had died. Jaina had run (_just like your mother, _and she could see her father's smile) but Jag – how in every Sithing Hell had he realized what she felt? – had caught her and held her and comforted her, _touched_ her in a way nobody had before. The next years had been a combination of this sheer need to have him closed and the wonder of being completely and utterly in love with someone. And all of it had been threaded through with earth-shattering fear: she could lose him, every day. Oh, he had made her laugh. And so incredibly, incredibly angry. He made her _feel_, and _love. _Jaina would never have expected to be able to lose him in other ways than through death. But she'd been young then, young and inexperienced and naïve. There were a thousand ways to lose something, and even more ways to break a heart. Maybe she had panicked, maybe he had been not clear enough. When he'd first asked her to marry him she had been shatteringly happy. And then the communication from the Ascendancy arrived that he was being recalled home. this time, he had no excuse. And everything had fallen apart utterly and completely.

_Jaina _had fallen apart.

It still hurt, even today, thinking of it: the revelation that she wouldn't be able to marry him, not if it meant leaving behind her family and her home. The knowledge that it would break not only her but his heart, as well, but that both of them did not know any other solution. He couldn't leave his family, she couldn't leave hers – it was a conflict without solution which they solved by parting without even saying good bye. Then: seeing him again during the Swarm War, all the things they had said and done at that time. The consequences of their actions. The ways they had changed. It was childish and naïve to think she still was the same and could feel the same towards him as she had when she had been a teenager. Still, somehow, emotions had persisted. Meeting Jag again on Tatooine, listening to him speak, seeing him interact with others – it had been like ripping open old wounds and while Jaina had long ago gotten used to the pain it also reminded her of a different time, a different world. She would never be able to let that go.

But it was something of the past, not of her present.

She wasn't in love with him anymore, as little as he was in love with her. They had been thrown together and had proven that they worked together well, even had been able to establish a tentative friendship. And Jaina would not break the fragile peace that seemed to have developed between them by trying to talk about their past. Instead, she settled into a cross-legged position and breathed out carefully. The wind that shifted the sands, the soft calls of birds of prey in the air: the desert was alive with sound, and yet quiet. Three moons stood in the sky, two of them full. The last one – Jaina didn't know whether it was Guermessa or Chernini – was almost complete. Valia had mentioned a full eclipse, she thought, absentminded. It probably would be quite the spectacle.

She forced herself to think of people and things other than Jagged Fel and their existing or non-existing relationship.

* * *

>Hours passed, and Jag had made no attempt to settle down to catch some sleep.<p>Something had been bothering Jaina for quite some time, now, and during the still hours she managed to define what it was exactly. Not knowing how to address him, she fiddled with a bit of sand until Jag looked up from his study of a dusty, old datapad and answered her gaze in a silent question. Jaina answered with one of her own.<p>

"You said you were at the Temple before you came here. How was he?"

Jag frowned. "Whom do you mean?"

"Uncle Luke."

"Oh." His frown relaxed. "He seemed… Tired, I guess." Leave it to Jag to be able to describe a person's state of mind with one adjective only. But he continued before she could say anything else, surprising her – and probably surprising himself, as well. "You two are very alike, did you realize? Not only because of your love for flying, or your fighting skills. There's this devotion to your family that never seemed as pronounced in…" He hesitated, then barreled on. "In Jacen. You care more for others than for yourself."

The laugh was startled out of her, in her surprise it carried neither the bitterness she thought it warranted nor the anger that had sometimes chewed at her.

"Bantha-podoo, Jag. I'm nothing like Uncle Luke. And I'm certainly not…" She bit her tongue. "Whatever. Just: that's not me, yeah? Don't compare us, because that's simply not right."

Then she realized she had not only spoken to him openly but had used his first name. In abject horror, she stared at her hands and didn't dare to move.

Jag mumbled something she didn't understand. Her neck felt hot. Thankfully, he didn't elaborate.

"You know," he said, "when you asked me how he was I expected you to ask about Zekk." His voice was casual. Startled once again, Jaina lifted her head to look at him and found his dark eyes fixed on her unwaveringly.

It had been Zekk. Her best friend, her comrade, her brother-in-arms. Zekk had been part of her life since she could remember, since she _(and Jacen)_ had found him on the lower levels of Coruscant. Zekk had been there when Jag hadn't: they had grown up together, had trained together, had fought the Shadow Academy and the Dark Sisterhood together. Zekk had been tempted by the Dark Side earlier than Jaina but, as she had, he had wavered on the edge of the abyss and then turned back. They had fought, side by side, even before Jag had stepped into her life. And, differently to Jag, Zekk had never left it. It had been Zekk who had found Jaina, bleeding and injured, cradling the broken body of her twin after their fight. Zekk who had commed her parents and had held her while she refused to let go of Jacen, who had, when her parents arrived and had taken her brother's body out of her arms, carried her into the _Falcon_ and had carefully laid her on a bunk in Med Bay and had not left her side until Uncle Luke had come and had put her into a Healing Trance. It had been Zekk who had been at her side and Jaina knew that she would always be able to rely on him, that he would always be there for her – but she had long ago lost the right to be anything more to him. Even if she had wanted – and on some days, Force, she had wanted it _so much_, if only to escape the loneliness of her rooms in the Temple – she had known that there was no way they would ever be more than friends. Jaina had lost Zekk, or, she had lost what they could have been, perhaps, in a future that did not coincide with theirs, the day she had chosen Jag over him, that fateful day in the past when she had been so _sure_ she had made the right decision. _You will choose the one person you cannot live without, Jaina._ Miraculously, they had remained friends – even though it had been difficult, in the beginning – and they still were. But Zekk had Taryn, now.

It was strange that Jag would mention him. On the other hand, they had worked together for quite some time, trying to bring down Alema Rar. Maybe they'd become friends.

"He told me to take care of you."

Jaina couldn't help it: she whirled around. "Stupid idiot," she snapped. "I can take care of myself very well, and you know it. Chauvinist pigs."

Somehow he looked like he wanted to smile. The tiny tug at the corners of his lips made her heart beat pick up speed.

"I told him you'd say that."

"I hope you also told him to mind his own affairs."

"I told him I'd have an eye on you." He sounded so matter-of-fact Jaina swallowed her heated response and looked at him, suspiciously. "He wanted to come here, too, but the Grand Master sent you on your own, so I gathered you wouldn't do anything stupid."

"Thank you." Jaina snorted, sarcastically. Maybe, if she didn't give in, if she just pretended there had been nothing special, that she hadn't felt anything… "That doesn't explain why you are here, though. Did you think I'd let her get away? Or do you want to kill her yourself so badly?"

"I would let you kill her without a second thought." Jag's answer was level, matter-of-fact, and it confused her. "But you won't. And I have a duty to fulfil." Oh, the dreaded word. "Besides that, I have no doubt in your abilities and your integrity, Jaina Solo."

The way he said her name sent a jolt through her body.

"I thought you didn't trust me," Jaina said, her own voice sounding chocked in her ears, and just barely swallowed the _not anymore_ that wanted to burst its way out of her throat.

It wasn't, she reminded herself, as if she had given him any reason to trust her in the first place. She had lied to him during the Swarm War, after all, and left him to die. She had broken his heart. She refused to let him journey with her, in the beginning. She had–

But Jag looked pensive. "It's not about trust, you know. Because I do trust you. It's just…" He paused and suddenly looked away from her. "Every time I look at you I can't help but remember. And that…" He didn't finish the sentence.

"I'm sorry." She'd said it before, many times. Jaina had told herself again and again, since she had dissolved their engagement, since she had returned his ring. She had said it again during their fateful parting over the skies of Tenupe. _I'm sorry. _She had said it again and again, whispering the words to herself in the star-less darkness of her bedroom in the Temple, in her bunk on the _Falcon_, in the vast emptiness of the universe surrounding her cramped fighter cockpit. _I'm sorry._ It had been the only thing she could do. She had wished to undo so many of her own decisions – but she had always known it was impossible. She had whispered it in her dreams: _I am sorry, so, so sorry._ But it wasn't the same. Her words were only the ghost of her sentiments, echoing and empty, and she didn't think Jag could grasp the magnitude of them, what she meant to say, what she _felt._ But she had to try. "I'm so sorry, Jag, I didn't…"

In the dim darkness his face was unreadable, his eyes dark.

"We were fighting on different sides," he said, finally, after a pause that felt like eternity. "Both of us made our choice. You are loyal to the Jedi Order, and to your family. It's in your blood. And that, I understand perfectly. How could I not?"

There was so much more in those few curt words. Not forgiveness, because he couldn't possibly forgive her. But Jaina suddenly was flooded with the sense that Jag _knew_ her, even after all the time they had spent apart. It was like seeing an old house, a place one once had lived in, and recognizing it despite the new furniture: nostalgic, painful, even. In the moonlit darkness, she could barely see his features but she knew them, either way. There were lines around his eyes, from determination and exhaustion. His prominent cheek bones stood out sharply. It was the Jag she knew, and a different one, at the same time: one she did not know at all. And then he lifted his face, and his eyes held hers for seconds. She felt like falling.

_He loved you so much, and it scared you._

Memory, as usual, was an unchecked blow to the gut. She had no right. He had no right. They had hurt each other so much: it was time they gave up on the past. It was time to move on.

"Almost the end," Jaina whispered. Jag didn't answer. But he didn't disagree, either.


	9. darkness rising

**darkness rising**

As promised by Valia, they broke camp early the next morning.

When the sun rose above the sands of the Dune Sea they stepped into the echoing labyrinth of the Jundland Wastes once again, moving from light to shadow without wasting time. In the middle of the towering entrance, dark canyon walls rising above her on both sides, Jaina hesitated for a second. They were close.

_Do not continue on. There is nothing but grief waiting for you at the end of this journey. Turn around, before it is too late, return home, live your life…_

In the shadows of the canyon walls – she hadn't realized they were quite _that_ high the day before – Valia led Jag and Jaina through the maze of ravines. It was almost cold without the scorching twin suns burning down on them. The red dust soon covered her hands and clothes but Jaina had gotten used to it.

When had she gotten used to it? She had no idea.

They ate while walking: nutri bars and some dried fruit and nuts the caravan had given them. Valia eyed their water supply worriedly but didn't say anything. Jaina exchanged a worried look with Jag and frowned. He shrugged, shook his head.

_The water needs to last until we get back to the oasis. _

_It should be enough if we reach the Valley tomorrow. _

They still hadn't discussed what they would do with the Dark Jedi. Take her back, as Jaina had planned on doing? Kill her, as Jag wished for?

"Well," Jag said. "We certainly never had to deal with _that_ kind of dilemma before."

Jaina's heart slammed against her rib cage painfully. "What do you mean?"

"On Borleias, there was water enough. We never had to worry about dehydration."

"Oh." Jaina wrapped a strand of her hair around her fingers. She hadn't had a shower in what felt like weeks, even if it had only been a few days. She felt dirty and grimy, sweaty all over from her head to her toes. "Yeah. Sometimes it feels like I spent great parts of my life on jungle planets."

"You don't say," Jag said, his face so completely impassive that his irony seemed to jump out at her crassly.

Appalled at the implications of her words she froze, unable to wipe the dismay of her face. Of course Jag had to turn around right then. When he saw her, he frowned.

"Relax, Solo. I was joking."

"Ha, ha," she said weakly.

He threw her a last unreadable glance and turned away again. She was glad.

The canyon walls rose into the sky to their left and right. There was barely a sound except for their foot-steps and the occasional cry of a vulture. Valia waved at them to be quiet. Jaina's danger sense vibrated now and then, but they never seemed to get too close to the desert pirates that roamed the Wastelands, living in caves and on the travelers passing by on their way through the Dune Sea. There was something else there, instead, the thin whisper of silent voices she had heard since she had landed on Tatooine and had thought to be in her mind only. It seemed malicious, now, ill-intended. A darkness lurking at the edges of her being that made her sick to the core.

_Walk away, Jedi._

Shivering, she closed her eyes briefly and focused on the Force. It felt dampened, somehow, as if covered by a veil – but still there. Jaina tapped into it gladly, drawing strength from it. Valia's presence was a comforting glow at the edge of her consciousness. And Jag… Well, Jag was _there._ As soon as she returned to Ossus, she would have to talk with Uncle Luke. Maybe do some serious meditating: there sure was a way to make this stop.

They walked.

Around noon, they came across something Jaina wouldn't have expected: the eviscerated skeleton of a sand-covered, rusted old speeder. Valia didn't stop, just tapped it trice in passing: her gaze was almost affectionate.

"Rest in peace," she murmured.

Jag frowned. "What does a speeder do in the Wastelands?"

"That's not a speeder," Valia said and shot him a chastising glance. "That's a podracer."

"A what?"

"Podracer. Don't you foreigners know anything? Podracing is a national sport on Tatooine. There are grand races twice a year, and they are highly advertised. Only the best pilots can control podracers. They consist mainly of the pilot's pod and the turbines, nothing else. Of course, that makes them a trifle difficult to fly. Speed is the foremost factor, not comfort."

"How fast do they go?" Jaina asked.

Valia grinned. "You have no idea. Every year, half of the participants crash before even reaching the finish line. There's only been one human in Tatooine's race history that has won a podrace, and that was almost eight decades ago."

"They're really that fast, huh."

"Don't get stupid ideas, Jedi."

"Oh, she could do it," Jag put in. "You haven't seen what she can do with a StealthX, or even a coral skipper." He paused, pensive, and added: "Come to think of it, there's probably nothing she _can't_ fly."

An odd sense of pride, followed by embarrassment. He didn't need to lie for her sake. At the same time, Jaina knew that he _meant_ it. He hadn't said it because he wanted to flatter her but because Jag told the truth when he saw it.

His praise meant more to her than she could have said.

_What do you think you are doing?_ The voice that rang through her head was full of anger, dripping with accusation. Jaina flinched. _Did you think I was gone, sister mine?_ _After what you did to me, how could you even for a second believe there could be something like peace for you ever again?_

It was enough to shake her back into reality and wiped all thoughts of Jag from her mind. In a perverted, desperate way, Jaina was glad.

Afternoon slipped into early evening and the sun sank behind the canyon walls, coloring the red desert sand rusty-brown and black. The shadows grew and turned even darker. They trekked on silently, now. The tension of possible danger had somehow morphed into something tangible that each one of them could feel. Valia was tense, her shoulders set. Her eyes were scanning their surroundings steadily, wary of every sign of a possible Tusken Raider attack. Jag followed her, his hand on his blaster. He, too, was on constant alert. Jaina could see it – but she could feel it, too. His vigilance resonated with hers. It might have been uncomfortable at another time but right now, it helped her focus. Her Force senses stretched wide Jaina brought up the rear, hand on her light saber. But there was no sign of the sand pirates, no hint that they were walking into a trap. The constant state of alertness they were in made them expect something around every corner and behind every rock. It became exhausting, but they didn't dare relax. The last time, Jaina told herself sarcastically, she had relaxed in order to almost get eaten by a krayt dragon-

That was it, she recognized. Or, at least, part of the reason for her tension, for there was far more she had to worry about. But once she noticed it, it couldn't be disregarded any longer.

"There's nothing here," she said quietly.

"Nothing?" Jag turned half-way, not breaking his stride.

Valia stopped, as if she had heard Jaina's silent words, and smiled grimly. "You noticed?" She turned towards Jag: "Nothing's alive here. Not even snakes. It's not normal, she does not like this the least. But we're close now."

_She. _Valia meant Tatooine again, Jaina supposed. She had no idea what part of her claims the planet was sentient were true and what was pure fantasy. Probably, the old desert runner was both a bit senile and a bit mad.

And then the towering canyon walls descended. Slowly first, then in a steep decline. There was sunlight again, bright and powerful, and Jaina blinked into day's last sunrays and almost gasped. The canyon path opened into an open expanse, smooth and red-dusty and covered with rocks here and there. The ground they stood on only continued for a few more meters and ten sloped downwards steeply. It was a cliff, Jaina realized, a plateau that towered over what could only be the Valley of Spirits. Red and brown rock turned into sand slowly, the colors intermixing. The valley was fairly small, surrounded by golden dunes on the one side and by the reddish-brown plateau on the other. Over the hills on the far side, the sun sank in a glorious display of colors.

"The Valley of Spirits," Valia said, unnecessary, and swept her hand out to point at their destination at the bottom of the vale.

Jag sounded troubled. "We won't reach it today."

"No." Valia shook her head and her grey hair danced with the movement, shone with the sunlight. "We will camp here tonight. Tomorrow, we can descend."

"Stay here?" Jaina's instincts rang in alarm. "We're too exposed here."

Jag nodded. "If the Tusken Raiders decide to attack again we have no way to go. Except for down, of course." He jerked his head at the edge of the plateau.

"The Tusken Raiders won't come here," Valia said. "They say the plateau and the valley are cursed."

"You don't say?" Jag frowned at her. "What are they afraid of?"

"I guess that depends." Valia's expression was pensive. "I never met anyone who survived the night here to tell of it."

"Wonderful." Jaina didn't need to look at Jag in order to know what he felt, but she did it anyway. "We can't go forward, we can't go back." She shivered.

"You're not afraid of local legends, girl?" Valia asked with a smirk, but even she seemed cautious.

"Of course not," Jaina said, bitingly. "But as you so kindly pointed out before, all legends have a true core."

"Well," the desert runner offered. "You could go back and see whether you survive a night inside the labyrinth. Or you could try your luck here." She moved towards a small, cave-like indentation in the canyon walls and plopped down her bag. "If you return tomorrow, I'll lead you down towards the valley."

Jag frowned at her. Jaina heaved a sigh. There was a pressure building up in her head that probably would turn into a full-blown headache if she didn't take a break soon…

_This is crazy. _

_I know._

_But our only option. _

_I know._

Simultaneously, they turned towards Valia's chosen camp site again. Jaina opened her mouth to ask whether she should take the first watch – and everything registered at the same time: the way Valia was sprawled out on the ground, unconscious. The way the sun blazed up and lit the rust-brown sands a bloody red and the way the Force darkened, suddenly, and a black, invisible hand clamped around her heart and her mind and _pushed._ Jaina stood, frozen, while the darkness rose over her like a tidal wave and drowned out everything. The Force flickered feebly, desperately, and was extinguished. Jaina opened her mouth to scream: no sound left her lips.

Instead, the darkness crashed down on her.

* * *

>She couldn't breathe.<p>The darkness surrounding her was a sticky, heavy mass of <em>something. <em>There was no sense of direction or time but that didn't matter since there was no way to escape and no other place to go. The stifling weight of the Dark Side cloaked her completely: clouded her mind and weighted down her limbs. Its sheer overwhelming presence managed to drive away every thought on light and hope Jaina might have been able to muster. There was no hope, there was no happiness – especially not for her. What was she still fighting for? It was useless. Nobody had ever heard her, anyway.

Jaina had seen so much in her life: she had lost friends, she had almost lost her parents. She had lost her beloved little brother and twin. She had fought – mentally and physically – she had fought and fought and fought and screamed all the while. Silently screamed in her head until her voice was raw, had screamed, begged, pleaded for it to stop. She was the Sword of the Jedi, had known since she had been elevated to the status of a Jedi Knight. She had always known it was her duty to fight for the Force and for the Jedi. She had known she would never have a home, would never find peace. And she had always _felt_ the weight of her fate, but she had also known she would never be able to do something against it. It was her duty, it was her fate, it was her _life_ to give for others, and there was nothing she could do. The least she could expect was for people who went that path with her, couldn't she? But nobody ever seemed to stay for long. Not her lover, not her friends, not even her brothers-

_Why is everyone leaving me?_

Oh, she had tried. She had tried and tried and it had taken her to the brink of the Dark Side more than once. Just like now, she had been threatened to drown in darkness more than once, had lost her hope, her will to live with the burden that was the fate the Light Side had placed upon her. And she could have lost herself in it, she knew now. She could have let go. It must have been horrible for Jacen, her sweet, calm twin who loved animals and nature as much as he loved humans and who had been forced to leave his self behind in favor of the expectations everyone else had placed on him, and that had broken him. Jacen had found nothing to hold on, while Jaina had been dragged back again and again. But for what? She could feel it, once again. It had always been there, never far, always: waiting for her to accept it. All the hate and anger that had gathered for more than a decade: against the Shadow Academy, the Yuuzhan Vong, the Chiss, the Galactic Alliance. All the enemies, small and large, she had fought against. All the despair and fear boiling inside her, the desperate incomprehension: _why are you doing this to us?_ Where was the Force when people needed saving, when children died by the hands of savages, when invaders shattered worlds and killed myriads and destroyed societies? Where was the Force when her little brother had died, when her twin had been captured, her parents had been separated? Where had it been when her twin had turned against his own family?

Jaina opened her eyes: the valley stretching out in front of her seemed bright to her eyes.

_Death,_ she realized. Anger clouded her gaze, a veil red as blood dancing in front of her eyes. People had died here: innocent people and guilty people, children, grown men and women and elders. They had been slaughtered. Maybe it had been an act of revenge, or maybe there had been revenge taken for them. But it wasn't enough, it would never be enough. This world had seen everything – the _galaxy_ had seen everything. The injustice, the torture, all the pain beings inflicted onto each other. For their own pleasure, for their own selfish reasons, sometimes even with the intention of doing the right thing. But the universe didn't care, and the galaxy didn't care. Beings could kill each other, commit murder, even genocide. Children and women would be raped and sold into slavery and good men would be betrayed. And people like the Jedi would try and try as they might and exhaust themselves trying to help, _desperately_ trying again and again. In return they were despised and mistrusted and _used._ And yet they would try and try – look at Uncle Luke, and what it had cost him, and her parents who had lost two of their three children and still the galaxy asked more and more of them and it never was enough and nobody cared and _It. Was. Enough._

Why fight for the galaxy and all the species in it when nobody fought for the Jedi? And it wasn't only the Jedi. There were so many other beings – betrayed, left, abandoned, used up until an empty shell was the only thing that remained-

_We were hundreds, once. Now we are barely a handful, crying out. The galaxy would not hear us. Our time has come. We will raze this galaxy- _

And Jaina wasn't Jaina Solo anymore. She wasn't her parents' daughter and or her uncle's niece, Zekk's and Lowbacca's and Tenel Ka's best friend or Jagged Fel's former lover. She wasn't Jaina Solo, Jedi Knight: She was Darkness. She would descend unto the unsuspecting worlds and wreak havoc. She would shatter the chains that bound races. She would free them of the burden that was life, would punish those who did wrong and would bring ascension to those who had suffered for all their lives. Because in Darkness was freedom, in death was eternity, and she would be the Queen of Darkness-

_Welcome, sister mine. Now you and I both are broken, and truly one._

The voice was there. She could see him, could _feel_ him, their Twin bond blazed back to life in a wave of heat and darkness.

_Jacen._

Her beloved brother, her twin in everything except for gender – when had he had the same realization? When had he accepted that nothing they could do would save the galaxy? So Darth Caedus had tried to kill his parents and his sister, had tortured his nephew and had crippled his aunt. He had abducted his own daughter. He had fought, he had killed and ordered kills, he had condoned the use of a bioweapon that had harmed an entire planet. And after their confrontation, after he had stopped fighting his own twin, heavily injured, to reach out to Tenel Ka in order to save his daughter, after Jaina had refused to take the last step, he had been taken into custody of the Jedi Order and had been exiled. Had been sent to a dead planet at the outermost Outer Rim of the Unknown Region, a place so far away even the Chiss had no detailed knowledge of it. The Yuuzhan Vong had, however. It had been their world once.

_I failed. As a sister, as a daughter, as a niece. As a protector. As a Jedi, I failed. _

But it hardly mattered now. The small voice in the back of her head faded away and died. She wouldn't be a Jedi anymore, she would be a sword. She would be the protector but the judge and the jury, executioner and hangman. She would bring down darkness over the galaxy that had betrayed her and the ones she loved again and again and again. She would carry fear into the farthest corners of the universe: fear and darkness, and with it, eternal silence. She would retrieve her brother, and together they would take the measure of revenge and the power and darkness they were entitled to. They had fought for their entire lives, and they had been given _nothing_ in return. It was only fair they took what was rightly theirs, then.

Jaina closed her eyes and surrendered to the darkness. It welcomed her like a long-lost daughter.


	10. sword of the jedi

_A/N: Thank you to colbyshere2008 and greenmulberry for reading and reviewing this story. Your input means a lot to me. More internal monologue on Jaina's side here, or is it more of an internal dialogue? Either way, thanks a lot! I hope you'll enjoy this chapter, too. We're moving towards the end: two more chapters left. _

* * *

><p><strong>sword of the jedi<strong>

In the darkness that was all-encompassing, someone called out her name.

_I name you the Sword of the Jedi. _

The voice wasn't loud, wasn't scary. Quiet and familiar, it nevertheless still sliced through the darkness like the sword she was would have cut through butter.

Jaina flinched.

She didn't want to remember, didn't want to be reminded: but the voice wouldn't go away. With it came the memory: Uncle Luke, his glacier-blue eyes warm and full of love. She fought, but the image wouldn't go away. Jag had said the two of them were alike, but she had denied the thought frantically. Because there was nothing Jaina Solo believed in more than in the goodness and the love that was her uncle's Force presence in her mind, and because being compared to him seemed like a sacrilege. She wasn't _good_, she wasn't _kind_ and she sure as hell wasn't a _protector. _She didn't care for the galaxy, didn't care for the beings in it. She just wanted to stop running, stop hiding, to punish those who had given her and her family nothing but trouble for the past decades.

_Jaina, you are my twin. If we stand together nothing will ever stand in our way…_

She was done with the Light Side. She would go find her brother, and together they would rule the galaxies and plunge them into darkness. She would not allow herself to be chased and hunted and stretched thin any longer. She would smite those who looked down on her, would bring despair to those who had committed treason towards the New Jedi Order. She would -

_Be calm, little one._

The Force signature was very, very faint and so very, very soothing. It ate at the darkness that was everywhere, in her heart and her mind and that surrounded her like a second skin. Suddenly, it felt poisonous to her when heartbeats before she had wanted to embrace it, _had_ embraced it fully and entirely. Jaina felt sick to the core at the touch of the darkness around her. What was happening here? What-

_You are not alone. _The whisper came from her own mind and echoed through the canyons of the Wastes, resounded from the winds all around her. _Do not give in, child of light. _It came from everywhere: from the sky surrounding her, from the rocks and the sand and from deep within the ground underneath her feet.

_Tatooine, _Jaina thought hazily. Tatooine, and something else. Silent and familiar, but not Uncle Luke's calm presence. An image flickered in front of her eyes – sand-colored hair, a reckless grin. _Ani? _There was no answer but a warm sense of welcome. And then her world was plunged into abrupt darkness again, so all-encompassing she gasped and tried to cling to something, _anything_, but there was nothing there to save her. Jaina fell, and fell, and fell. She felt tears stream down her face, freezing on their way down her cheeks and leaving behind burning trails. Clinging to a thin thread of _something_ she had no words for, Jaina _fought. Oh Jacen, Jacen my brother, was this what you saw? _And she fell for what seemed an eternity, fell until she wasn't falling anymore, and when she lifted her eyes there was nothing all around her except for the weak, flickering light in the darkness that was Jaina Solo in a galaxy full of darkness.

_Sword of the Jedi._

Her uncle's voice again now; familiar, beloved. _You shall be blessed for the peace that you bring to others. _There had been grief in his face she remembered suddenly. He had known the title he had bestowed upon her was no easy burden. _You did what had to be done._ Her mother's words, so full of love and sorrow they had threatened to tear down Jaina's walls. She had clung to them: it was the only thing she had had. She had betrayed her twin, but she had saved the galaxy, _And that has to count for something, doesn't it?_ Allana, so small, so sweet and precious.

_Always you shall be in the front rank, a burning brand to your enemies, a brilliant fire to your friends. Yours is a restless life, and never shall you know peace, though you shall be blessed for the peace that you bring to others. _

"Jaina."

Uncle Luke. He just stood there, calm as he pleased, and looked at her. Her mother, when Jaina returned from the mission to Mykr, when she had burned with darkness at the loss of both of her brothers. _Don't do anything Luke wouldn't do._ Because when it came to it Leia Organa Solo trusted him, trusted him more than she trusted herself. Because she was his twin. And somehow Jaina had shared these feelings, even if she hadn't known at that time: It was as if his unshakable trust in her alone could stop her from falling.

"You-"

His physical appearance was so abrupt, so sudden, that she couldn't find any words. First it was all darkness and abandonment, and then it was light and she wasn't alone anymore. There he was: brown Jedi robes, blond hair threaded with silver, clean-shaven, with all-knowing blue eyes and a painfully familiar smile.

"I'm sorry, Jay."

Only two people, independent of each other, had ever called her that. She wanted to run to him, cling to him and feel his faith in her, his unshakable trust that there was a way.

"You're sorry?" Jaina exploded instead. "Well, let me tell you: _sorry_ doesn't cut it in the least!"

"You're angry," Uncle Luke observed. As a child, she had sometimes hated him for the calm demeanor with which he countered her anger. It had made her feel small and insignificant. When growing older she had come to see it was his way of prompting her on, to give her an opportunity to tell him what she thought and felt. And she loved him for it, but right now…

"Don't pretend you know what I think and feel," she said, heatedly, and pointed a finger at him. "I'm in the middle of the sithing desert on a planet so far off the Trade Routes that it's barely known by name in the Core. I've been running after a Dark Jedi for the past weeks. I have to deal with an annoyingly all-knowing guide and a bounty hunter who wants my prey dead. I've fought pirates and sithing _krayt dragons_ just trying to do what you asked me to. I've done what you ordered me to do almost my entire _life_, and you don't even deign to tell me that there's a kriffin' _DARK SIDE NEXUS _out here? What in the name of the Force were you thinking?"

A smile stretched over the Grand Master's face. It made him look a dozen of years younger. "You sound just like your mother."

That took some of the wind out of her sails. Jaina sighed and dropped to the ground. (Golden sand, soft and almost feather-like. The sun was comfortably warm. Not Yavin, definitely not Coruscant.)

"Where are we, either way?"

"This here?" Luke dropped next to her, leaning back on his hands, and blinked towards the suns. Two suns, Jaina realized. "Tatooine, of course."

Jaina snorted. "Yeah, of _course_."

"An idealized version," he amended. "Years and distance do tend to… _embellish_… certain memories."

There was a house in the distance, Jaina realized, and she started to understand. But the moisture farm her uncle had grown up on was small and neat, nothing like the wind- and weather-battered farm houses she had seen, and the wind carried the scent of jungle and rain, of cinnamon and spices and something else distinctly sweet (hot chocolate?), of fighter fuel and machine oil and brushed metal. In a fit of stubbornness, she decided not to ask the obvious questions. As it was, it already felt like a breach of his privacy.

(She had the distant feeling Mara would be there, too, just behind one of the dunes or in the house, out of sight but _there._ It always had been like this: She'd been able to feel her Master's presence through her uncle, and the other way round.)

Luke sat up again and fixed his serious, blue eyes on her. But he didn't say anything, waited for her to start.

"What?" Jaina snapped at him, impatient. "We're just going to sit here all day?"

"I doubt that," he said, mildly. "We do not have all day. You have the right to be angry with me, Jaina. I knew what it would cost you, and still I inflicted it all on you. Your burden is even heavier than mine, it seems. Sometimes I forget that even though you received the proper education it would not be easier for you than it was for me."

He was right: Jaina was positively _furious_. It wasn't a new development, no recent change. She had been very angry for a very long time.

"You're sithing right," she said. "It's not easy. It never is. Sometimes I don't even know whether I _want_ it to be easy. But I wouldn't mind some peace of mind now and then, you know? And you've made it damn hard to have even that."

At his expression she almost stopped, but then barreled on.

"I'm not blaming it all on you, Uncle Luke. It's… It's just. It's all of this. I know Mom and Dad loved us… loved me. But they were never there, always on one mission or the other, and then they brought us to the Academy. And we loved it there, I know, but sometimes I wonder if all of this had happened if we'd just… I don't know… Had grown up on the Falcon, together with Mom and Dad… And Chewie. Maybe we couldn't have stopped the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. But it might have gone differently. Ani…" She swallowed. "You sent us there, Uncle Luke. You sent us to Mykr. And I know you didn't want to. But Ani… He's gone. He'll never come back. And Jacen, too…"

Now, she stopped. Closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Continued speaking without opening her eyes again.

"How could they do this to us? To me? They were my _brothers._ They _left_ me. Dad left Mom when she needed him most. And you named me the Sword… It's like a curse, isn't it? Maybe, if I hadn't been named that, maybe then…" A thought occurred to her and she snapped open her eyes, her fury blazing again. "And Jag! That stupid idiot! He left, too, we were so young, did he really expect me to leave all of you behind and follow him to Csilla? We could have worked something out, maybe, I-"

She caught Luke's glance – amusement? How did he _dare_ – and snapped her mouth shut audibly, embarrassed beyond words.

"Never mind that."

He didn't comment, didn't judge, and she loved him for it even though she still was furious. "Go on."

"Borleias. The Swarm War. Mandalore. Jacen." Jaina hung her head, exhausted and weary. "Why did it have to be me?"

When he didn't answer first, she waited, looking at him from the corner of her eyes. Uncle Luke sat perfectly still, glancing out at the horizon. Then he said quietly: "I could give you objective reasons, Jay, but you know them already. I wish I hadn't named you Sword of the Jedi. I wish you wouldn't have had to go through the hardships you experienced. I wish Ani was still alive, and Jacen hadn't fallen. I wish everything could be different. I really do."

He didn't apologize for anything and he didn't try to explain, either. Reasons, more often than not, were excuses and nothing more.

"Are you saying this as the Grand Master," Jaina asked, "Or as my uncle?"

"I'm saying this as who I am," he answered, gently. "And as the one I choose to be."

_We choose the person we want to be._

"This conversation is moot," Jaina said, exhausted but without malice. "So much like the discussions at the Temple. It's like there are no clear answers to my question, like, ever."

"What _is_ your question?"

Jaina thought about it and found she had no concrete answer. Maybe that was part of the problem, here.

"Why?" She finally said. "I guess the question is why. Why me? Why that way? Why Jacen? Why us? Why the Jedi, why the Light Side, why the fighting? Why?"

"That's a lot of questions." When she glared at him, he smiled. "Do you want to know a secret?"

Exasperated, she shook her head. "Shoot."

Luke leaned towards her, serious. "I am twice as old as you are, and I still don't know the answers to the very same questions." He shook his head slowly. "There are two ways to explain, I guess, but both explanations of course will never suffice. And other people might give you different ones. For one, we can say the Force has its reasons for everything that happens. It doesn't explain anything, of course. Why are we alive? Why do we fight, even though it seems useless? If it has the answers, it never gave us any."

He glanced into the distance, suddenly lost in thought. Jaina wondered what he was thinking of. _Not what, _her brain supplied. _Whom, perhaps._

"What is the other possibility?" She asked, softly.

Luke shook himself back to reality. (Not exactly reality, Jaina supposed, but it was just as well.) "Why," he repeated her question. "I don't know. But maybe we are born to live, and to look for our own, personal answer. Maybe each and every being is alive in order to look for the one thing he cannot live without."

Maybe, Jaina thought, numbly. And maybe the Force was her guide to find exactly this: her answer. _Maybe_. Jaina-the-unborn-child had felt the Force through her mother. Jaina-the-infant had learned to accept it. Jaina-the-teenager had tried to control it, Jaina-the-almost-woman had used it, unconsciously, and had almost fallen with it. The Force was what had given her life. It would take it again if it saw fit to do so. Until then, Jaina had to live in a way that made it possible for her to accept her choices: in a way she could approve of when she looked back. It meant her decisions were her own, as were her mistakes and her fears.

Her fear.

"It just won't go away," she whispered and dropped her head. The terror was there, always close these days. Jag had left. Chewie and Ani had left. Jacen had left her, too, in a way, Zekk had Taryn, now, Mara had been injured badly: who would be next? Jaina lived in a state of perpetual fear of being left behind, and she couldn't help it. The nightmares were proof of it. Jacen had only been a trigger, not the cause. "I'm so afraid. I just can't-"

_There is no fear, only the Force. _

Jaina's mind formed the familiar words almost by itself. She looked up to see Luke smiling at her. His expression held both love and grief – and a trust in her that went far beyond Jaina's trust in herself. As if she could do anything, be anything, withstand anything, simply because he believed in her.

"Human beings are not meant to be alone," he said. "I know you are the Sword. I have regretted placing this fate on you again and again, but I cannot change the past no matter how hard I try. Still; you are not alone. There are people who love you very much. Come back home, Jay."

He didn't say: be strong for them. He didn't tell her how she was supposed to gain strength. He just leaned down to her and kissed the top of her head, like he had when she was a little kid and nightmares had kept her awake. On nights like those she had crawled into his lap in his small office deep within the Temple on Yavin. And, as it had been when she was small, she found the touch gave her strength. This was far from the answer she had wanted to hear, she realized, in fact, it was not an answer at all. But it was peaceful and warm and Luke's presence was familiar and full of love and trust – for her, in her. Maybe Jacen had fallen because he hadn't felt that trust, or he had fallen because he had seen the horrible darkness that was the vast galaxy, or maybe he had had even different reasons. But Jacen's reasons had been his, and she had her own. And yes. Maybe she was irritable and impatient and snappy. Maybe she was hasty and acted too quickly and was too forceful. Maybe she had nightmares and maybe she felt terribly, terribly alone at night and maybe she missed someone who held her and told her she wasn't alone and never would be. Maybe she would never have a family, or even children of her own. Maybe she would run through the rest of her life as she had run until now: without a pause, without a clear answer. Always trying to fulfil expectations others placed in her, and failing. Failing ever so often. But she had done many good things, too. Made a few people laugh, angered even more. Smiled at strangers, played with children. Saved a few people, precious few, lost many more. But that was what her life was like, she supposed. And she always would have people who-

_Come back home. _

And as Jaina made peace with herself, Tatooine's presence retreated and Uncle Luke disappeared.

The darkness returned, but this time, Jaina was prepared. She threw everything she had against it: her love for her family, her anger at Ani and Jacen for having left her like that. Her trust in her uncle, the person who was most like her and the complete opposite. Her sadness, her hopelessness and her despair, and the firm belief that there was a meaning to all of this, a sense in the universe. _There has to be more than everything. _Her trust in her family, in her brothers, her friends, even her trust in Jag. _Jag._ And her parents, her uncle, her aunt, Ben and Allana – they all loved her, and needed her to come home.

The darkness was strong. It pulled at her and tugged, forced and blackmailed. Flashes of images in front of her eyes: being reunited with her twin, using the Force to call back her baby brother, descending on criminals and corrupt politicians and slave traders and restoring order. Living in a world in which everyone was happy and safe, because she had the power to not only protect them from harm but to eliminate the threat that was a constant reminder in her old life. Holding in her hand the key to a different future, one in which all the ones she loved were together and nobody left. Nothing changed. A constant, happy life in which she'd never be alone again-

_No._

Jaina didn't want this.

_We're the same, sister mine. Your fears are mine, and your future is the same as mine, as well. _

No.

Her mother's loving smile, her father's arm around her shoulders. Luke's faith, Mara's trust, Zekk's friendship, Tenel Ka's pain. Ben, Allana, Tahiri. Jaina drew her strength from thoughts of the people she loved and fought with everything she was.

A flash of blue eyes, a reckless smile – the ghost of a touch.

_You are not alone._

* * *

><p>There was no transition whatsoever.<p>

Gasping, she resurfaced, the impenetrable darkness shattering into a myriad of pieces. All around her, the desert was asleep but the sky was alive with stars. It was a silver darkness, not pitch-black; soft, not screaming loneliness. And among the stars stood the three moons, full and bright. Already they were overlapping at their edges.

Jag was holding Valia, her upper body in his arms, but his gaze kept moving over to Jaina. She had no idea how much time had passed but when she turned slightly to meet his eyes something flashed over his face – surprise, relief, _something_ – and she knew it had been less time than it had felt like, and more than she had thought. She was at his side the next instant, briefly brushing his shoulder and jerking her hand back the next second in terror. She hadn't intended to touch him, just had wanted – _needed_ – ah, sithing bantha podoo, whatever it was it could wait.

"How is she?"

Valia's eyes were open wide but didn't see anything. Sweat coated her skin. Jag had tilted back her head, perhaps she had been convulsing – even now, her limbs were trembling minutely.

"She was worse just now," Jag answered, curtly. "Her pulse is slowing down again. For a minute I thought-" His lips pressed into a tight line.

"How long?"

"About five minutes, I guess." He avoided her eyes.

Jaina bent down to feel the desert runner's pulse and then touched her own forehead to Valia's. She had only little experience when it came to healing but the woman was Force-sensitive, in a way, so perhaps-

There was no need. At the brush of Jaina's fingers the woman jerked, her eyes flying close and open again, and when she looked up there was life in them again.

"Kriffin' Sith-hell," she sighed. "That was bad. It never was this bad before."

Stunned, Jaina jerked back. "You knew about this? And didn't tell us? Are you mental? Did you want to _get us killed_?!"

Valia used Jag's shoulder to pull herself into an upright position, clearly too weak to do so by herself. Her voice, however, sounded just like always: a bit annoyed, a bit angry, and greatly amused. "I thought you could deal with it, Jedi."

Jaina just stared.

Then, cursing, she jumped up. Jag caught her arm, his eyes dark.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah." She brushed his hand aside, her fingers lingering for a heart-beat and then jerking back. His gaze was unreadable, but his emotions were clear. Jaina couldn't deal with it right now and wasn't even sure she ever wanted to deal with it. Wanting to touch him, wanting to be touched – and, at the same time, fearing his closeness, she started to pace instead. At least the plateau was large enough. Jag watched the desert runner, impassive. Valia leaned back against the canyon wall and rummaged around.

"Where's my bag – ah, there. I think we should get some sleep now. It seems the danger has passed." A sharp glance at Jaina: "I think it will be safe from today on. Seems like her trust in you wasn't in vain, girl."

Jaina stopped in front of her, raked both her hands through her hair and cursed one last time. Then she closed her eyes and took deep, calming breaths. Somewhere in the back of her mind her uncle chuckled, and Tatooine hummed in the silent recognition that was her smile. Force-blast them.

"I would offer to take a watch shift," Valia said, her voice suddenly tired. She looked like she had aged years in just one night. "But I fear I have to rest. Will the two of you be fine?"

"We won't kill each other, in case you're wondering," Jaina bit out.

Valia just sighed. "No, I guess not. Good night. Please do try not to attract any lumenors." She slid down and burrowed into her blanket until only stripes of her silver hair remained visible.

Jag's eye brows rose into his hair line. "What are lumenors?"

Jaina almost laughed, a reaction probably provoked by stress, pressure and exhaustion. "Fairy tales. They say the lights one can sometimes see in the desert at night are lumenors that lead wanderers astray. Once you follow one of them, you never return."

"Just when you think you've seen and heard everything," Jag murmured. "This planet keeps getting weirder every day."


End file.
